I first became interested in genealogy on a school trip to Hope in Derbyshire when I was around ten or eleven years old. As part of a topic on the plague e we were visiting churches and graveyards when someone pointed out an old gravestone that had my full name on it. I later doscovered that Hope Valley seems to be one of two sources of the Eyre surname with variants being found in the area going back around 800 years.
On returning home I asked my parents and grandparents where we were from and for as much info as they could on their parents, grandparents and possibly great grandparents and I set about drawing up a basic tree of my ancestors. Satisfied by this basic tree and not knowing where else to go to find out more (this was pre the WWW) I put the tree aside and forgot about it for years.
Fast forward umpteen or so years to around 1999 and my getting connected to the Internet. Whilst searching for my name I found someone called Dan Eyre in Australia had created a website publishing research into various branches of the Eyre family. I emailed him asking if he had any unpublished info on my relatives and for advice researching online. Unfortunately he had no info on my line but gave advice which I followed and I set about researching my tree again. By this time my childhood tree was lost and I no longer had any grandparents to ask (important lesson for people starting out). I started from scratch ordering certificates, checking indexes, ordering more certificates, checking various indexes and websites etc. and eventually I got back past the point I had previously managed with grandparents' assistance. I sent my research off in GEDCOM format to Dan Eyre for inclusion on his site only to find he was considering winding down supporting his Eyre research website in order to travel around Australia in his retirement.
Around this time I'm was looking into changing career as a knee injury was being aggravated by my working in cold and confined spaces as an electrician. Considering my options I signed up on a taster course/open days at the University of Hulls' Scarborough Campus where I tried my hand at web development, programming and networking and attended lectures on a variety of subjects and my mind is made up. I applied and was accepted on their BSc in Internet Computing and started in September 2002.
The combination of Dan wanting to retire in order to travel and my starting my computing studies the decision as to who should take over the reigns as maintainer of the Eyre family history website was simple. Dan posted me a copy of his book (sorry his book is no longer available), most (but not all) of his gedcoms and a backup copy of his website.
I took over as the maintainer of the site around Christmas 2002 and as the official Eyre GOON (an organisation called the Guild of One Name studies whose members research a specific surname worldwide) a little later. Initially two versions of the site were available when I hosted a copy on my university account space and Dan's original continued to be hosted on his. I modified my version, altering its structure, navigation and mark-up and adding various new features. I bought a domain name and migrated the site across to hosting run by a friend from university.
Dan's version of the site seems to have disappeared around 2008, presumably due to a switch of ISP or the hosting plan expiring. My version, now under the domain EyreHistory.net is hosted on my own hosting account, has undergone numerous design changes and content generation tools and currently comprises over 15,000 pages. As of summer 2021 I'm in the process of migrating all of the research into a database driven system with older static pages being available via a to be created archive link.