Hugh Durkin - Affiliate Marketing & SEO
An affiliate marketer, seo, and internet marketing professional. This is my blog.
From the category archives:
Ryanair have made yet another cost-cutting move which is an industry first – they’re moving to Web Check-In only from October. However, it doesn’t seem clear from their press release whether it will be free or not to check in on the web, or whether a new check in charge will be part of the fare structure from May.
{ 3 comments }
Via Dries Buytaerts website, news that open source stuff is secure enough even for Governments to use. Barack Obama has been doing loads of great things over in that there America since he came into office, and he’s decided to get a site going – Recovery.org – to keep US citizens up to date with their progress. And the wonderful Drupal has been used to get it up and running. This is a big thumbs up for the open source community, as previously governments have leaned towards bloated, expensive solutions with silly maintenance contracts to ensure data is ‘secure’ and so on. Maybe some day our wonderful Irish Government will outsource technology infrastructure jobs to open source developers who won’t rip them off.
{ 0 comments }
One of the coolest features about Drupal is the ability to run heaps of sites from the same codebase. However, if you’re a total wacko when it comes to SEO and want to do absolutely everything to help get your site well indexed by Google, it can be difficult to figure out how to get Drupal to manage non-www to www redirects effectively. Because Drupal runs from one codebase, there is just one .htaccess file in the directory holding the main Drupal code. You could just copy the .htaccess file and place it into your /sites/sitename folder, but if you have hundreds of sites to manage, this could be a pain in the ass. So, what do you do?
{ 3 comments }
Sometimes it doesn’t pay dividends trying your best to be responsible. Last Friday I drove to a friends house for a few late drinks, and being in a very responsible mood decided to leave the car overnight outside on the street, and pay for the next mornings parking in advance (as one can do most of the time). When I was leaving (about 4am), I went to the parking meter to pay for a few hours in advance - I think Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council start charging from 8am or so for parking in Dun Laoghaire on Saturdays. Alas, the meter gave me an error, and wouldn’t issue me with a ticket. I’d no idea where the next meter was – it was dark and I was tipsy – so I thought i’d leave it and figured they’d realise the meter was broken. It was, after all, right beside my car.
{ 3 comments }
Some time ago I expressed my anger at Screenclick from an affiliates point of view, as they’d changed their site to incorporate Microsoft Silverlight but it was pretty much a requirement to use some controls on the site, and slightly offputting to the user. Finally, they’ve managed to see the light (pardon the pun!) and integrate Silverlight as an optional extra, and in a more subtle fashion. They’ve also dropped the pointless spash page on the site, bringing users direct to the action – the DVDs they’re renting.
{ 0 comments }
Whilst checking out some news on Breakingnews.ie, I noticed they’ve started using Google Friend Connect to help engage with their site visitors and provide a slightly more interactive experience. Whilst this is certainly a step in the right direction, I’m just wondering if maybe they should have chosen Facebook Connect as their social platform provider of choice. Why?
{ 2 comments }
Despite much fanfare about video on demand in various territories, we’ve not really seen much of it in Ireland, and even in the UK uptake isn’t what it could be. A lot of this is down to broadband speeds in Ireland (or lack thereof), but over in the UK with Virgin Media offering 50mb broadband, what is the future for watching movies online? Do we still rent from the video store? Do you rent from dvd rental companies? Do we watch whatever Sky movies have on at any particular time? What if any movie you wish to watch you could do so for free, instantly, and without getting up from your seat? Hulu.com certainly looks like a sign of things to come.
{ 1 comment }
What an interesting day for the UK stock market. Whilst the BBC and others have reported Marks and Spencer are set to cut around 1,000 jobs, Bloomberg has reported gains for Debenhams, Next PLC and even Marks and Spencer. So what exactly is going on?
{ 0 comments }
I’m not 100% surprised by this, as Screenclick fairly recently acquired Busybeedvd and since day one have been playing down Moviestar.ie’s presence in the Irish market (as they did with Busybeedvd), but as of today Moviestar.ie is now being fulfilled by Screenclick.com. If you’re a regular reader you’ll have spotted my earlier opinion of the Screenclick.com website. It now seems with this latest move i’ll have to look at other DVD rental services – unless Screenclick somehow move to Moviestar’s site. There ain’t no way in hell i’m going to use the new look Screenclick.com.
Maybe if they listened to feedback and actually acted on it i’d be in a better position to continue using their service.
{ 9 comments }
Via Mashable, here’s a story which has probably gone a little bit too far over in the states due to a lack of Christmas time news. A group of mums have staged a protest outside Facebook‘s offices in Palo Alto, California, due to some images of breastfeeding mums being removed from the site. Why? Facebook’s policy is to remove any pictures of breasts where the nipple or areola is on display. As of today, over 75,000 mums have joined the Facebook group campaigning against the ban.
{ 2 comments }