Webmaster’s Report
This has been another successful year for the FreediveCanada web site with steady improvements in content and traffic. Much of the focus of the year has been directed towards making maintenance easier as well as optimizing the site for search engines. This has not been a year of large additions of content or major restructuring.
Content
The table below shows how the file counts have evolved over the past year:
| 2001-11-26 | 2002-7-9 | 2003-9-14 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| HTML files | 60 | 166 | 260 |
| Perl scripts | 0 | 19 | 34 |
| JPG images | 95 | 256 | 946 |
| GIF images | 41 | 67 | 177 |
Major changes to the web site include the following:
- Online membership purchase and renewal via PayPal
- Online updating of membership database
- Automatic renewal reminder script
- Bid for 2004 Worlds
Traffic
Since July 2002, our server at Uniserve has been able to provide detailed statistics on the web traffic. A graph of the detailed monthly statistics is shown below:
Site traffic does vary quite a bit, with lulls during the winter and peaks around major competitions and record events. However, there has been a general upward trend in the usage statistics. There is also significantly more traffic from the Google search engine.
The parts of the site that get the most traffic are the Pic of the Week archive and the competition database. The new 2004 Worlds bid section has also had quite a bit of traffic.
Up and Coming
There are big changes coming for the FreediveCanada web site:
- French language version of the entire site
- Separate site for 2004 Worlds
- Volunteer recognition database
- Web interface to update Pic of the Week
- Web interface to update competition database
- Video clips of records
Obviously there is quite a bit of work to do over the next year, especially if Vancouver wins the bid to host next year’s World Championships.
I conclude this report with an appeal for free skilled help. This is more than I can handle on my own, especially with a full time day job. Fortunately, Jane Mitchell has graciously accepted the task of doing the translation for the French language section of the site. However, even with Jane, more help with maintaining, translating and upgrading the site would be greatly appreciated.
Tom Lightfoot
Webmaster
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