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| Statement of Intent |
The Pars Page is an independent website, devoted to Dunfermline Athletic Football Club. It has no formal link with the football club, and does not represent the views of the club or any of it's employees. It is my own personal site, consisting of material aimed at providing accurate information (to the best of my knowledge) to those who share an interest in the club and in football in general.
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| Contraints |
The site is maintained on a "spare-time" basis by myself, Ally Cook. Though every effort is made to keep it up-to-date, it is limited by the constraints of my full-time job, family commitments, holidays etc. In other words, though I spend a large amount of my time maintaining the site, I do have a life to lead outwith The Pars Page. Keeping the Latest News section up-to-date causes particular problems. It may not always be up-to-the-minute, and in such instances, I hope you will accept my apologies. In recompense, though, the "News Archive" holds a record of all news items published since its inception in October 1998, allowing the visitor to view an on-going record of events concerning the club. If you have missed anything because of your "life outwith the Pars", this is the place to catch-up with what has been going on.
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| Site History |
Like most amateur web-designers, my first site was a personal homepage, began in the spring of 1998 and called (shock, horror!) Ally's Home Page. Along with some information about me and my home area, I included a page containing some brief information on my favourite football team, Dunfermline Athletic. This became known as "The Pars Page". From such humble beginnings, as they say, a website was born.
By October 1998, The Pars Page had developed into a fully fledged site. The introduction of "The Pars-in-Europe Tour", gave the site it's unique identity as a features-led site, rather than simply a hash of news and results (though such pages were soon to be included). "My Favourite Year" followed, a very personal view of the poigniant season, 1995/96. By now, the site was gaining a strong visual identity. The familiar Pars Page logo had appeared and I was experimenting with some visual effects. Towards the end of season 1998/99, I published the first few parts of my story of the Jim Leishman era, "Crazy Dreams", the last few sections of which will be updated during the coming season. Finally, the "Guestbook" was added, to provide visitors with the ability to interact with the site. For season 1999-2000, you will note the introduction of information on Dunfermline's opponents, a set of profiles on the players and the start of an Archive of all Dunfermline's results since their formation. |
| Visitor Statistics |
One of the most frustrating things about running a website is finding out whether anyone is visiting your site. In the respect it is probably a bit like being the DJ on a late night radio show - is there anybody out there? From the start, I included a link to my E-Mail address, and the messages I recieved were extremely encouraging. But to get a proper indication of visitor numbers I initially used a free, but rather poor, counter, provided by my ISP. This showed that the site was receiving about 2 or 3 visitors per day in the autumn of 1998. Not a lot, but it was consistent, and, anyway, it was only a bit of fun.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the site now receives around 15-20 hits per day (hardly earth-shattering, but not too bad for a wee independent site). This equates to around 500 hits per month. The graph shows the exact visitor count since the log was introduced in April 1999. I hope that with a bit more publicity for the site, these numbers will continue to rise. But even if they do not, essentially, running the site is still, and will always be, just a bit of fun. |
I later discontinued using a counter, until I was able to introduce a proper logging script in the spring of 1999 and gain a more accurate records.