A little history about ORC:

The idea for Ottawa Rink Conditions was initially thought up during my 2nd year of college (2004/05). A friend and I were walking to the bus stop and thought it would be really cool if we were able to check online to see what the conditions of our local rinks were before we left school.

My initial thought was to create something similar to the already popular ottawagasprices.com website, in which users can annonymously post gas prices to the site. However, during my studies, I did not have the time or resources to start learning how to code this type of website. It was already late in the rink season, so the idea was put on hold.

2005/06 - A friend in the UK had a passion for coding and creating dynamic PHP websites (infact it's his job). So I approached him late December. With the rink season upon us (oh and the holidays). He became very busy with other work and was not able to work on the site the website. At that point the rinks season was starting up again and it was too late. The site was put back on hold for the summer.

2006/07 - Fresh out of college, it was time that I finally learn how to code in PHP and interact with an SQL database on my own. By late December there was a functional website that was accepting conditions on behalf of any registered users. By the end of the season, there were 40 users registered and over 100 conditions posted on 40 of the 231 outdoor rinks in the city of Ottawa. I asked the city if they would like to link to the site and I was politely rejected. I followed up with my councillor Maria McRae, who pushed the city to change their position in that regard.

2007/08 - After a meeting with some city representatives we had come to an agreement in principle that would have the city link to my site if I met some conditions. After spending the entire summer re-developing the website to allow for the French language we are prepared for a November 2007 official launch.

This website has been a wonderful learning experience, I hope you find it useful! Feel free to contact us using the 'Contact Us' link below.