Why we do this

Web site guides folks to the best decorated homes

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.

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 4^th year, 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.

2007 will represent a new era in Lights of the Valley. Stay tuned,,,,

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 seven 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-family" 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.

Merry Christmas,

Alex Dourov Click here for photo