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Why
Did We Start This Site? |
When we moved to Livermore in 1992, we relied on
newspaper listings to find valley homes decorated
with holiday lights my family could visit and
admire. The local newspaper, which listed the street
addresses of "decorated homes" was helpful but many
times we would get lost or, worse yet, stumble on a
"stinker". What may be excellent and beautiful to me
may not be for the next person, I thought. People
sometimes nominate their neighbor or themselves just
for the heck of it - just to see their address in
the newspaper.
So, what I thought people needed were maps and
pictures to determine for themselves which houses
were worth a visit. With that idea in mind and 20
hours (initially) of work, I created Lights of the
Valley (lightsofthevalley.com) and published it on
the World Wide Web December 11, 1999.
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History |
Once completed, I sent out an email to about 25
people I knew in the Tri-Valley to announce the site
and within 24 hours I was getting visits from as far
away as Australia and Japan – which showed the power
and speed of the Internet in action. KKIQ radio
promoted the site by talking about it for several
days running, and the local newspapers included the
URL as a part of their decorated homes lists.
I originally started with about 30 homes in
Livermore and Pleasanton on the Web site. Some
features of the site included the ability to click
on small photos of the houses to yield a larger
view, while addresses below the "thumbnail" images
provided links to on-line maps.
Some of the original images included cartoon
characters on Leland Way and on Candy Court in
Livermore. There were the animated figures of Bob's
World on Calle Reynoso in Pleasanton. And of course,
I had to include valley fixture Deacon Dave's home.
In 1999 his home had 193,000-lights (over 210,000
for the 2001 season). Two years before, PG&E
installed a special power transformer for Deacon
Dave, just so he could power all those lights
without using multiple gasoline generators.
In 1999 over 9,400 visitors, including a few from
Japan, the UK, Sweden and the Cocos (Keeling)
Islands, reviewed the 30 homes listed in Livermore
and Pleasanton. Many of those visitors suggested
other homes that would be included on the Web site.
9418 users
For the 2000 holiday season, the site started off
with over 40 homes, including new listings in
Danville, Dublin and San Ramon. Tracy joined us on
December 12th of that year. 5499 users.
New for 2001 is a "let 'em know" feature, where site
visitors can use an automated system to notify their
friends about the site. Also for 2001, listed homes
were given 12" by 24" signs stating "My house is
featured on lightsofthevalley.com". 2001 had over
23,000 visitors to the site! In 2001 we also added
homes in Lathrop and Fremont and ended the year with
about 90 homes on display. 23135 users
In our 4th year (2002), we had over 28,000 visitors
bringing our grand total since 1999 to over 66,000.
Visitors to the Web site can preview almost 120
houses with holiday decorations before rounding up
the family and hopping in the car. In 2002 we added
homes in Alamo, Concord, Hayward, Manteca, Milpitas
and Stockton. We are growing by leaps and bounds. We
ended the year with over 125 homes being listed.
28468 users
2003 starts our site with a complete make-over. We
got rid of the frames we were using & started to use
a decorative template, rather than the plain vanilla
white pages. Why? Well, as more and more people
access the Web with broadband, we can fancy up the
site a bit without making them wait too long to
download it. We also pared down our list to 75
homes. Many of those reductions are attributed to
homes that were never verified as being decorated
last year. This year we added homes in Martinez,
Clayton and Walnut Creek. Our record so far - 36679
users.
2004 had us featured in Valley Lifestyles Magazine
and being promoted on San Francisco radio station KOIT, which plays Christmas music 24/7 between
Thanksgiving and New Years. We added homes from the
communities of Bethel Island, Antioch, Pleasant Hill
and Novato to our listings. Midway through the 2004
Christmas season we also added an on-line survey
asking people how they found the site, if they liked
it, and other related questions. 19997 users
2005 had a really late start. Our kid's swim team,
Tsunami Aquatics, hosted its first meet in November
and as meet director, that took most of my time
since September. Letters to houses listed on the
site that normally are mailed around November 15th
did not go out until after Thanksgiving. Its hoped
that all the listings will be updated by December
6th. Brentwood, Pittsburg, Folsom, Rio Vista and
Vacaville were added this year. San Francisco radio
station KFOG found us and put us on their blog.
Various other San Francisco Bay Area radio stations
including KKDV, KUIC, KDFC and KZBR began to promote
Lights of the Valley this year. 24486 users
2006 marks our 8th year of providing this community
service website. This year we added Sunnyvale, San
Lorenzo, San Leandro, Palo Alto, Alameda and San
Jose to the ever growing list of communities listed
on Lights of the Valley. The site has become really
popular, creating several new records for usage:
December 23 had 2,296 unique visitors, creating
339,839 hits and downloading over 845 MB of images
and data.
Date Range: 12/17/2006 - 12/23/2006
Total Sessions 11,676.00
Total Pageviews 91,884.00
Total Hits 1,550,842.00
Total Bytes Transferred 3.83 GB
2006 was our 2nd best year - 2003 still has the
record # of users. 36330 users. We ended the year
with 122 houses in 32 communities and 6 counties.
2007 represents a new era in Lights of the
Valley. The third complete overhaul of the website
with dynamically displayed, database driven pages.
At the end of last year we searched high and low
across Northern California for other homes that
would "qualify" for a coveted spot on the Lights of
the Valley website. We start this year with almost
300 homes - yes, more than double from the year
before - in 69 communities and 14 counties! We also
added a "House of the Day" feature so that "hand
chosen" houses from the database are automatically
displayed as the House of the Day between November
23 and January 1. Then we made that process even
better. We created a special page and some coding so
that anyone could use one line of code from our site
and display a thumbnail image of the House of the
Day on their own site ! 2007 ended with a massive
123,293 unique visitors - and a whopping 9 year
total of 307,372 unique visitors. More people
used LOTV in 2007 than in the previous 4 years
combined !!!! The site ended with 432 houses
in 96 cities in 20 counties across Northern
California. We had more press and radio coverage
this year than in any previous year, with the HOTD
features on the home page of various Bay Area radio
stations and dozens of other websites as well.
What originally started out as a “fun thing to do”
project became more “spiritual”. I received about
350 emails telling me how valuable the site was to
them. What really touched my heart were emails from
people who told me it was especially meaningful to
the people that are unable to get out and enjoy the
lights, they can just enjoy them at home.
Year after year, this Web site has been featured in
the Tri-Valley Herald, the Contra Costa Valley
Times, the Independent News, The Pleasanton Weekly
and on radio stations KKIQ, KOIT and KCBS. I can't
thank them enough for their support of this
"community service" project of mine.
I have truly enjoyed myself these past nine
Christmas seasons by putting together this site. I
was overwhelmed at the kind comments that I have
received from many of you telling me how much this
site has helped you, or how it even helps "shut-ins"
be able to get a virtual tour of the Bay Area's best
Christmas light displays.
One final note - this site is strictly a
"one-man" voluntary, community service operation.
It is not a commercial site, we are not affiliated
with any outside organizations, we do not accept
"voting" for favorite houses, nor do we charge
anything for listings nor do we award prizes of any
kind. I decide what houses should be listed - based
on my personal tastes - and what I think the
community at large will be interested in seeing.
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This website is a community service provided by Alex Dourov and
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