Park Board Web Site - One Million Visits!

August 26, 2005 - The Vancouver Park Board's popular web site broke a new barrier this week when it passed the one million visits a year mark - the first time the site has achieved this benchmark! This is a testament to all the excellent programs, parks and events that the web site so easily makes available to the residents and visitors who have used this amazing tool in shaping healthier and more informed lives.

The Web in the Beginning

It seems like only yesterday, when in 1996, pioneering web design primarily focussed on static parks and recreation information pages. The Park Board's home page featured an artistic rendering of a typical park blade sign leading web crawlers into hundreds of deeper pages of information mostly devoid of graphics or photographs.

During the ensuing decade it became more and more apparent that the internet was undeniably the wave of the future with boundless opportunities for the Park Board to easily provide public information on park and recreation programs and projects. The first years of web work included numerous template redesigns and the uploading of databases, past Park Board minutes and reports, and features on timely events and programs.

Park Board Web Brings Viewers Back "Home"

By December 2003 the Park Board had overhauled the site and introduced its new home page and style featuring direct links to popular web locations and four feature boxes highlighting special events, meetings and information that would change weekly. Also implemented was the ProgramFinder listing all recreation programs by category which could be readily searched with just one click. By March of 2004 the new site was officially launched with a city-wide campaign brandishing the call to action, "Come Home to Parks and Recreation!" A totally new look also promoted the snappier and much shortened web address - vancouverparks.ca

Online Registration Debuts Along With ParkFinder

Following close on the heels of these advancements was online registration for many community centres easing a process that had once been fraught with long line-ups at inconvenient times for many residents. In November 2004 the Park Board's three full length golf courses went online allowing an easy to book service called "click and golf". By the summer of 2005, premium booking was offered to golfers online allowing, for the first time, 30 day advance bookings for a modest fee - all possible from the comfort of one's own computer.

Throughout the summer staff have been putting the final touches on a new ParkFinder feature which will make Vancouver one of the only Park Departments of its size in North America to offer park profiles, photographs and histories of all its 200 parks on line!

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