Maintaining an independent Saints website takes a hyper effort - and that's exactly what Mark Fouet puts into his site about the new St Mary's stadium.

The 40-year-old systems development manager from Totton, pictured below, started up his own dot com (@ www.saintsnewstadium.co.uk) after being less than impressed with what the official site had to offer.

"Like most Saints fans I am excited about the new stadium and all it means to the club, but there's not that much on the official site," he said.

"I thought lots of people would be like me and want to know what's going on so I set up this site."

Mark has been a Saints supporter since he moved south 12 years ago, previously following the fortunes of Luton when he lived in London.

"I had a season ticket in the West Stand benches at The Dell for three or four seasons," he said. "But, when my job changed, I couldn't get to matches and my ticket lapsed, so I'm on the waiting list for one at the new stadium."

Perhaps part of Mark's interest in the ground is to watch his own seat being fitted but it's a subject that has certainly caught the imagination of many.

"The site went online on October 8 and, up to last week, we'd had 7,500-8,000 hits from all over the world.

"I am surprised by the popularity in a way because it's all out of my own pocket and I can't afford to advertise.

"So it's by word of mouth and it's quite a narrow subject - you're not going to get everybody in the world wanting to look at it."

Initially the excellent site, which keeps up-to-date with happenings of the ground and pictures from it, took a lot of hard work.

But Mark now spends two to three hours on a quiet week maintaining it, thanks, in part, to help from Katie Hamilton and her team at the visitors centre.

As for the future of the site Mark remains undecided. "I'm not sure what I'll do," he said.

"At first I thought I'd stop updating it once work finished and just leave it so fans can look at the history of how it was built.

"I'm also toying with the idea of putting together a CD of the images and the building and selling it with the profits going to charity, but it would be difficult and expensive to do."

For a full review of the website see Web Watch in The Pink on Saturday.