A former regional press journalist is at the heart of an Internet project to pay tribute to the deceased.

gonetoosoon.co.uk, already features tributes to more than 800 lost loved-ones and its creator hopes it will grow as big as Friends Reunited.

West Yorkshire businessman Terry George set up the non-commercial site a year ago, with former Huddersfield Examiner head of content Jenny Parkin working alongside him.

Almost 2m people have visited to read poignant words, and add their own thoughts – and 500 people have left condolences for the victims of last summer's London bombings alone, in a separate section of the site.

Jenny said: "People shouldn't think it's "not their place" to make the first move as often closest family members will follow their lead and contribute later. People do not need to give their name to establish a tribute, just an email address.

"Pages, which can feature music as well as photos, can be removed at any time but so far no-one has requested that a tribute be deleted from the site.

"Users can search for tributes by area, as well as name, so it's possible to see all tributes in your own town and city."

Gonetoosoon started as a tribute to a friend of Terry's who died. Other people quickly asked him to establish pages in memory of their own lost loved-ones.

It leapt to widespread attention in November when friends, family and well-wishers left more than 2,000 messages in memory of George Best.

Terry said: "One thing we all have in common is that we all lose someone close to us at some point. And I know my site's helped many people in their grieving process.

"I honestly believe it has the potential to be as big as Friends Reunited. To my knowledge there is no other free-to-use site like this in the world."

It is free to set up a site page on Gonetoosoon.co.uk. All pages are vetted and protected from abuse.