The new homepage on a mobile phone, showing the interactive map!
After a long planning process and hours of transferring skatepark information from the old site, the new Skateparktour.ca is live for all to see an use! There is still almost 100 skateparks yet to be transferred, but they will come in the next few weeks. It is time for a new look and improved functionality!
The first two generations of skateparktour.ca was developed using WYSIWYG editors, Adobe Go LIve then Dreamweaver. About 6 years ago the site move to the Joomla CMS, which brought a new level of technical sophistication to skateparktour, but with the growth in the use of mobile devices, it was time for the Joomla site to be replaced.
This brings us to the end of March 2018 and the unveiling of the new WordPress version of skateparktour.ca! The site uses Divi, a responsive theme that adjusts the way skateparktour is displayed depending on the device bring used to view it. The most important design features include:
The use of facets to narrow the search for skateparks based on your criteria
the ability to search using an interactive map or a list
Responsive display of the virtual tours and photo tours. No more extending beyond the device!
Readable text
More easily read and utilized menus for site navigation
Screen shot of the old site on a mobile phone.
All of these features mean skateparktour.ca will be a more effective tool to find skateparks near where you live and where you are traveling. More features are planned, and we’re open to your suggestions and feedback, so don’t hesitate to contact skateparktour.ca!
Now if the snow would just go away, we can all get into our skateparks and have a great time in 2018!
It’s back to the future for Skateparktour.ca as virtual tours return to skateparktour.ca after an absence of a few years!
When Skateparktour.ca first went live back in 2006 visitors were able to explore the skateparks using virtual tours created using Apple’s ground breaking QuicktimeVR. The interactive nature of QuicktimeVR let people explore skateparks in an immersive tour, almost as if they were there in person standing on the spot. As technology advanced, QuicktimeVR was left behind and eventually stopped working and Skateparktour.ca had to switch to slide shows to showcase Canada’s skateparks. Thanks to the development of affordable spherical cameras and HTML5, virtual tours are back on Skateparktour.ca, and they are bigger, better, and more immersive than ever before!
Here’s a sample: Chuck Bailey Skatepark in Surrey BC
Loading...
Using the VR Tour
The new virtual tours come with a set of controls you can use to explore the skatepark. On phones and devices, gestures also work, and you can look around the skatepark by moving your phone too! Clicking/tapping on icons in the tour will take you to that location in the skatepark.
Conversion will take time!
Converting all of the parks to virtual tours will take time because the Skateparktour team is very small and has a limited travel budget. So far 26 (almost 10%) of skateparks have had virtual tours created so far. Here is the list:
Schools and skateparks don’t usually mix. Schools offer the usual sports like volleyball, basketball, and badminton while their skaters, BMX’ers, and scooter riders leave the school to do what they enjoy. This past June, Delburne Centralized School showed for the second straight year, that schools CAN use skateparks for helping educate their students. The success of their Ghost Ryders Invitational Skatepark Competition is a challenge to schools to include their action sports enthusiasts in school activities as well!
Take a look at the Delburne Skatepark where the Ghost Ryder Invitational was held. An impressive skatepark for a small town, that shows what can be done when a community gets behind their youth!
Delburne Skatepark, Home of the Ghost Ryder Invitational Skatepark Competition
This Christmas when you are gift shopping for family and friends, please remember to shop your local core skate, bike, and scooter shops and your local indoor skatepark (if you are lucky enough to have one in your town)! When we shop local, the profit generated from our purchase goes to local business owners and their families, not to huge multinational corporations or online retailers headquartered far away and often in a foreign country.
Local shops and parks are the ones who organize comps, demos, and video premieres. They are the ones that will be there to support efforts to get a new skatepark in your community. The big mall stores rarely (if ever) invest time, effort, or money to build the local scene, they just move their profits to head office.
Skateparktour.ca really appreciates the support of several excellent core shops over the past year, and two outstanding Canadian skatepark design and construction companies. We want to recognize and thank these businesses for their help in keeping Skateparktour.ca alive and growing!
Since Skateparktour.ca went live in August of 2006, it has helped people locate and navigate to skateparks near where they live and travel. Skateparktour.ca also allows skatepark users to check out parks before making the trip to the park, to make sure it s one that they will enjoy riding. Skateparktour.ca is the perfect tool for planning your own skatepark tour, like the one taken buy the Miler family during the summer of 2016. I don’t know if the Millers used Skateparktour.ca to plan their trip or not, but they could have, because all of the 14 parks they visited are in the Skateparktour directory!
Ride N Play is a 22000 Sq ft indoor skatepark that opened this winter in Edmonton. The owners have invested heavily in building a first class facility for everyone who enjoys wheeled actions sports to enjoy. In this, skateparktour.ca’s first video blog, we take you on a tour of Ride N’ Play, and fill you in on some more detailed information about the Ride N’ Play experience!
Once last summer when an upcoming event posted by a Calgary BMX shop was shared on the Skateparktour.ca FaceBook page, it prompted this response from one skater:
“Get your shit together skatepark tour. Stop promoting BMX at skateparks. If that’s what you want to promote, at least do skateboarders a courtesy and change your name to parktour.ca”
This is not the first time that a skateboarder has made an issue of BMX being included on Skateparktour.ca. The relationship between skaters and BMX’ers is sometimes “strained” so the comments are not really a surprise. The attempt to get the comment poster to take a wider view about BMX’ers in skateparks failed. Apparently I am “losing it” according to the poster.
It’s true that skateparks originated because of skateboarding. Back in the day when the first skateparks were being built, BMX and mountain bikes had not been developed yet. Today though, some skaters still hang on to the belief that skateparks are for skateboards and that’s all. They see BMX’ers as invaders in “their” skatepark. They are called “skateparks” after all, aren’t they? While it’s not unusual to hear bike riders or skaters complaining about each other, sometimes with justification, in most places the groups have learned to co-exist peacefully and even be friends.
The whole issue did raise a good question though, about how many bikes, and people riding other things that are not skateboards, use skateparks? Are skateboarders still in the majority? How big is BMX in skateparks? And what about scooters? They too seem to be a growing user group in some places. In the summer of 2012 Skateparktour.ca set out to find answers to these questions this study is the result. Check out the infographic below for a summary of the results.
