Welcome to the Ships IO Help Guide

If you want to learn more about using Ships IO, you’ve come to the right place. If you're having issues with Ships IO or have any feedback on our website, please contact us at team@shipsio.com. Read on to learn more about Ships IO.

Adding data

On each of the search pages for Ships, Companies, Yards and Parts, you'll find a plus icon next to the title and number of results. Click this icon to add a Ship, Company or Yard in its respective location. When you do, you'll get a dialog to enter some basic details. Each type of data added has one or more required fields. So should you accidentally click the Save button before entering any data, you'll see the required field marked in red color. For example, adding a ship requires at minimum the Name. So does a Yard and company. Once you click Save, the added Ship, Company or Yard should show up at the top of your grid results. This assumes that you don't have a filter set. To edit more details, go to its details page by selecting it from the grid.
Some tips for quickly adding data. When the dialog is displayed, hitting the enter key is the same as clicking Save. The first field is already in focus, so you can start typing. Pressing tab will skip between fields. The ESC key will cancel the dialog.

Editing data

When you open a details screen, such as a Ship, Company or Yard, you'll notice the edit icon to the top right corner. Clicking this icon, will open a dialog in which you can change the details of the Ship, Company or Yard. Click Save, if you're happy with your results, or Cancel to discard your changes. Your changes will show immediately. Keep in mind, a seasoned Ships IO editor might come back and override your changes in the future. It's all in the goal of keeping our data as accurate as possible. If the ship was created by you, you may also click the Delete button to delete it. The most common need to delete a record, is if you created it in error or if it's a duplicate of another boat. Please do not delete the record, simply because it's no longer in use. Instead, mark its status appropriately. If you run into error or unrecoverable mistakes (i.e. accidentally deleting a Ship), please contact team@shipsio.com for assistance. Note that Companies not linked to a Ship in any way will eventually get auto-deleted by our system. To prevent this, make sure the company is an owner in the past or present of a ship. Alternatively, upload a logo and it won't get automatically deleted.
The Ship details screen is a bit special. This page holds a lot of data and the data has been organized into panels with headings. To the top right of each panel is an edit icon just for that data. So if you want to edit Tonnages for a ship, simply press the edit icon in the Tonnages panel. This way, it's a little easier to edit the large amount of details data for a ship.

History

When you edit data, you'll notice that each details screen has a "Created by" and "Modified by" section in the top right corner. This keeps track of edit history and gives you proper credit, when modifying a ship, company or yard.
When editing a Ship's detail screen, you will notice a History section. Essentially, this is a list of official changes to the ship, such as a sale, name change, owner change or rebuild. To add info to this list, simply press the plus icon in the top of the list, change details and press the save button. Notice that there is a checkbox next to Type to mark the change as a rebuild. The importance of doing this, is so that a rebuild will get a link to a details screen with all the Ship's details as they were before the rebuild. Also note that the History list is sorted chronologically. For it to work correctly, you'll need to make sure the "To Year" and "To Month" properties are set correctly.
The Events list work in a similar manner to the History list.

Uploading photos

We welcome you to share Ship photos with the rest of the world. Ships IO makes it very easy to upload a photo of a Ship. First, use search to find the ship and select it to go to the details screen. In the Ship details screen, you'll see a small square area that says "Click or drag file to upload photo". If you click it, a file dialog will open on your computer and you can pick a photo to upload. You'll see a progress bar as your photo uploads. Stay on the details screen until it's done uploading, otherwise your upload will get cancelled. Once the upload is done, the page will automatically refresh and your photo should be displayed in the list of photos on the details screen. Another convenient way of upload is to simply drag the photo from your computer to the upload square. In fact, if you have more than one photo, you can drag all of them in a single operation and all will get uploaded.
Each uploaded photo will have a menu for that given photo. It's a small down arrow after the photo title and it provides a few more options for the photo. You can delete the photo (perhaps you uploaded the wrong one or it's a duplicate). You can also edit the photo. This shows a dialog so you can edit the File name or Source (i.e. your name or the name of the photographer). If you need to make edits to the physical photo, you should download it to your computer and do so in your favorite tool before re-uploading it. You can also set a photo as the Ship's main photo. Being the main photo, it will be displayed on the top line of the details screen and in the search results. Finally, if you click any of the photo thumbnails on the Ship details page, a full page version of the photo will be shown as a photo carousel with the ability to move forward or back, should there be more than one photo. Click x in the top right corner to close the full-screen view.
Uploading a Company logo is very similar to uploading a Ship photo. On the Company details page, you'll find a similar file upload square, this one says "Click or drag file to upload logo". The major difference being that a Company only takes one Logo. Uploading a new logo will replace any existing logo and the logo does not have a menu for any additional actions.

Parts

Parts is a little different from Ships, Companies and Yards are you are adding a listing of a part you are selling. A new Part will have a status "Draft". Drafts are not visible to anyone but you. You can use the filter in the listing to display just your Drafts, but they will also be visible to you, when there is no filter applied. Once you've added all the necessary details of your listing, including any photos you have, you should edit the part listing and change the status to "For Sale". Once changed, your part will be listed and viewable by anyone. If they're not a ShipsIO user, they will be able to see it by going to https://shipsio.com/public/parts/ and the part will also potentially be listed by search engines such as Google. You can still edit your listing after you have marked it for sale. If you're part is sold, you should edit the Status to "Sold" to reflect the change.

Ranking & Stats

Ships IO ranks our data for either Top 10 or Top 25 depending on how much space your screen has to display the results. We rank Owners and Yards as well as Ships by Flag or Type. These are selectable as Owner, Yard, Flag and Type buttons right under the Ranking heading on the Ranking page. Clicking any of these will show you the ranking as a graph. Each of the four rankings are done by four different vessel values: Count, Value, TDW and GT. For example, if we pick Owner ranking by Count, we'll get MØLLER-MÆRSK (at the time of writing this help guide) as the largest active ship owner. Changing the ranking to show Owner by Value, might show a different result. At time of writing, TRANSOCEAN INC is the highest value fleet. Showing by TDW and GT will again show a different results. Clicking the value bar of an Owner or Yard will take you to its details page.
If you're keeping track of how many ships there currently are in the Ships IO database, you can find this under the Stats menu. Here you'll find the total number of ships broken down by their status.

Account & your subscription

On the Account page you can sign up for a monthly subscription to Ships IO. Once you've done so you can manage your subscription here, including updating your credit card and cancelling your subscription. You can also see a list of your subscriptions charges. You'll need a credit card to sign up for our monthly subscription. Once signed up, we'll use the credit card we have on file to renew each month. We'll e-mail you a receipt each time we charge you.
Should you have any problems with your subscription, don't hesitate to e-mail us at team@shipsio.com

AIS Exchange

ShipsIO is currently working on a Beta version of an AIS exchange. It is intended to be open to anyone and allows exchange of AIS vessel information between users. For anyone who is running a SignalK server, there is a plugin available. You will need a key from your Account page. Once the plugin has been installed and the Key has been entered in the SignalK config, your SignalK server will communicate with ShipsIO servers and exchange AIS targets around your location.
If you have any requests on future development of the AIS Exchange network, don't hesitate to e-mail us at team@shipsio.com