[align=center:hhkuc331][size=5:hhkuc331][b:hhkuc331]Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to MEEEEeeeeee, happy birthday to meee ….[/b:hhkuc331][/size:hhkuc331][/align:hhkuc331]

Yes I know it’s not quite our birthday, I think the site was started some time around July/August 2005 but I’m not entirely certain and I ran out of time/couldn’t be bothered organising this post back then, so this is more like a happy 2.2th birthday really …

There was a website created a long time ago by Cy Newton (old DIHL organiser) for the Dunedin Ice Hockey League but that has long since been taken down. He started on a new one, but has since left the sport, the new site he started to build is still online but was never completed … http://dihl.atspace.com/%5B/url:hhkuc331%5D

[b:hhkuc331]Here’s some old backups of our website in case anyone is feeling nostalgic ” title=”Smiley” />[/b:hhkuc331]
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]January 2006[/url:hhkuc331][/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]June 2006[/url:hhkuc331][/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]August 2006[/url:hhkuc331][/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]October 2006[/url:hhkuc331][/*:m:hhkuc331][/list:u:hhkuc331]
[b:hhkuc331]And here’s some old versions of the forum[/b:hhkuc331]
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]October 2005 to April 2006[/url:hhkuc331][/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]April 2006 to May 2007[/url:hhkuc331][/*:m:hhkuc331][/list:u:hhkuc331]

[size=4:hhkuc331][b:hhkuc331]A brief history of WHY THE HECK Ryan built this thing in the first place:[/b:hhkuc331][/size:hhkuc331]
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]There was no rink in Dunedin, so Ryan went to Canada[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Rink got built, Ryan decided he might come back from Canada[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Ryan wants to know what’s going on hockeywise in Dunedin so Googled “Dunedin Ice Hockey” … nothing useful showed up ” title=”Sad” />[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Ryan had to email a bunch of people and got vague, distorted, unofficial explanations of what hockey stuff was on[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Ryan came back to Dunedin and kept hearing stuff about various games, but realised that in reality no one seemed to know what the heck was going on apart from Joyce and Jackie.[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Ryan joined the SK8 Cup and realised that poor Joyce and Jackie were doing all the statistics for the competition, but yet no one ever got to see them … sorta defeats the purpose!?[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Ryan asked Joyce if she minded him making a website for the competition. Joyce said “sure”.[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Ryan made the worlds most budget website ever using Yahoo! Site Builder. It was hosted at http://www.geocities.com/dunedinicehockey/%5B/url:hhkuc331%5D%5B/*:m:hhkuc331%5D%5B/list:u:hhkuc331%5D

And that’s why we now have a website ” title=”Smiley” />

[b:hhkuc331][size=4:hhkuc331]A brief history of the site:[/size:hhkuc331][/b:hhkuc331]

[b:hhkuc331]August 2005[/b:hhkuc331]
Originally the website was setup purely as an information portal for the 2005 SK8 Cup as the players (including me) were complaining that they had no idea of when they were playing, what team they were on and who their team mates were.

The site took a while to take off, it was only launched after the SK8 Cup had started and very few people knew about it. It wasn’t until the DIHL was relaunched that traffic started to really flow in as the website was used as the main information portal for players.

[b:hhkuc331]October 2005[/b:hhkuc331]
On 2nd October 2005, the forum was launched. I never expected it to be used for much beyond people stopping into say hi and we’d never see them again. But it has turned out to be the most highly trafficked part of this website. The original forum was (and can still be viewed) at http://s14.invisionfree.com/dunedinicehockey.

Once the SK8 Cup finished and the DIHL started, the site split into two sections, one for the SK8 Cup and one for the DIHL. This was silly, so eventually the site was combined into a cohesive unit with sections for the various ice hockey competitions.

[b:hhkuc331]November 2005[/b:hhkuc331]
At this stage the site was still coded with Yahoo! Site Builder which created some of the most revolting HTML code ever seen. Kyle Matthews pointed this out to me one day so I sat down and learned some HTML basics, which Kyle kindly told me were utter crap, so I sat down and relearned, then he told me they were still crap, so I learned some more and so and so forth till I decided I knew more than him and chose to ignore him ” title=”Smiley” /> Thanks for the help Kyle ” title=”Smiley” />

[b:hhkuc331]February 2006[/b:hhkuc331]
The site until this point had been purely my own project and had no official connection to the Dunedin Ice Hockey Association (DIHA). Graeme Sykes (DIHA president at the time) eventually asked me if I’d like the DIHA to pay for webhosting and from then on the site became the official Dunedin Ice Hockey Association website.

[b:hhkuc331]April 2006[/b:hhkuc331]
The new hosting and new site was launched on 30th April 2006. Along with the new domain name http://www.dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi, I replaced the freely hosted forum with our own phpBB2 install. This original forum can still be viewed at http://www.dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi/forumold/.

[b:hhkuc331]August 2006[/b:hhkuc331]
Website turned one year old ” title=”Smiley” />

[b:hhkuc331]September 2006[/b:hhkuc331]
The graphics and design of the website at this stage were heavily borrowed from the original Yahoo! Site Builder design. So I sat down and learned how to use Adobe Photoshop and designed a new skin for the site, which I launched around mid 2006 … http://www.dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi/archive/oct06/

[b:hhkuc331]December 2006[/b:hhkuc331]
There were some complaints about people with colour bindness having issues reading this site and I felt the need for a redesign, so in late 2006 that design was binned in favour of the cleaner, whiter look that we have today.

[b:hhkuc331]April 2007[/b:hhkuc331]
I got entirely hacked off at the ineptitude of our old web hosts, so shifted the entire site over to my own personal hosting account with HostGator.com. This has allowed us to host virtually unlimited numbers of videos and photos. This also meant that the DIHA did not need to pay for webhosting anymore as I have already paid the hosting fees myself. It also made adding and modifying email addresses much easier.

[b:hhkuc331]May 2007[/b:hhkuc331]
On 1st May 2007, the amount of spam we had flowing into our forum was becoming a torrent. The phpBB2 software we were using simply wasn’t resistant to modern spam bots. I added hack after hack to the software to try and fool the spam bots but they always managed to break through eventually. The spam also increased in it’s offensiveness towards the end as some of the posts featured extremely graphic sexual images. Special thanks to Chris Laing who tirelessly removed spam bot posts one night when we were VERY aggressively attacked by a number of spam bots. So phpBB2 was replaced with the SMF forum software we have today and we have had no spam posts since installing the new forum software, fingers crossed this continues!

[b:hhkuc331]June 2007[/b:hhkuc331]
The forum was heavily modified to be used as a Content Management System (CMS) to allow administrators to use the forum software to add news posts and modify existing pages.

[b:hhkuc331]September 2007 (NOW!)[/b:hhkuc331]
Our ‘approximate’ second year birthday ” title=”Smiley” /> Woot!

[b:hhkuc331]Coming late 2007/early 2008[/b:hhkuc331]
Site will be upgraded to run with WordPress as the CMS for the site
Improved gallery system will be installed
Improved video gallery system will be installed

[b:hhkuc331]Coming early/mid 2008[/b:hhkuc331]
New skin will be developed incorporating the soon to be developed new ‘DIHA branding’.

[b:hhkuc331]Coming eventually – I need help with this stuff[/b:hhkuc331]
Scheduling system will be developed to allow ALL games, practices etc. to be controlled via the website.
Statistics software will be developed to allow our scorers to enter the stats directly into the software and leave the web server to calculate all the statistics and post it directly to the web.
If the rink installs a wireless internet service, a live feed of the stats will be available on the site.
If the rink installs a new security system, then live webcam feeds of the rink, scoreboard etc. will be available for viewing.

Feel free to suggest suitable additions to the site.

[size=4:hhkuc331][b:hhkuc331]Some interesting statistics for the website:[/b:hhkuc331][/size:hhkuc331]

The blue bits represent non-human visitors, ie: Google bots etc. The statistics for September 2007 (now) have been extrapolated to give the predicted stats. That massive spike in the bandwidth usage is not an error, we are actually predicted to use 20 GB or so this month! This is due to all the videos I’ve been uploading lately.

[align=center:hhkuc331][img:hhkuc331]http://www.dunedinicehockey.co.nz/archive/stats/bandwidthvsdate.png[/img:hhkuc331]

[img:hhkuc331]http://www.dunedinicehockey.co.nz/archive/stats/pagevisitsvsdate.png[/img:hhkuc331]

[img:hhkuc331]http://www.dunedinicehockey.co.nz/archive/stats/uniquevisitorsvsdate.png[/img:hhkuc331][/align:hhkuc331]

Funny search terms people have used to reach our site:
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]hockey kiss ass[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]hairy balls[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]stefan yo mofo[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]awkward steve jackson[/*:m:hhkuc331][/list:u:hhkuc331]

Most popular search terms used to reach our site:
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]dunedin ice hockey[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331] hockey[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]how popular is ice hockey in new zealand[/*:m:hhkuc331][/list:u:hhkuc331]

Where do our visitors come from?
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~90% of our visitors are from New Zealand[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~5% of our visitors are from USA[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~4% of our visitors are from Canada[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~1% of our visitors are from other countries[/*:m:hhkuc331][/list:u:hhkuc331]

More random tidbits of information:
[list:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]We receive ~800 visits from Google searches/month and ~450 from all other search engines combined[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Somebody linked to us from http://forums.somethingawful.com/%5B/url:hhkuc331%5D once and we got over 40 hits from them.[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]We get ~100 visitors/month who reach us via links from Wikipedia[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~10% of our visitors view more than 10 pages per visit[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~45% of our visitors stay for more than a minute[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]~17% of our visitors are using crappy old dialup[/*:m:hhkuc331]
[*:hhkuc331]Average time spent visiting the site is 6 mins 34 seconds[/*:m:hhkuc331][/list:u:hhkuc331]

[size=4:hhkuc331][b:hhkuc331]Thank you very much to all of our visitors. Particularly the regulars who post here in the forum, Kyle who’s nitpicked it to death and taught me a whole bunch about web design and Krissi for sending me HEAPS of updates on the peewees. I would have given up on this web design stuff a long time ago if it hadn’t been for all of you ” title=”Smiley” /> From Ryan.[/b:hhkuc331][/size:hhkuc331]