Hugh Durkin, Irish Internet Guy

Writemaps - a handy visual sitemap tool

When planning a website, everyone has their own way of figuring out which content should go where.  Loads of people use spreadsheets, others use downloadable and installable purpose built tools and - ashamedly - I’ve been using a good old piece of paper and pen for about ten years.  After a while though, it can become quite a pain rejigging your site plan time and time again.  Today I was once more editing the visual sitemap for Shares.ie to accommodate some new content I signed contracts for today, and pretty much lost the plot because it was becoming such a pain to plan a site with that much content.  After a quick search on Google I stumbled across a web based tool called Writemaps, and what a saviour it is!

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Organicsupermarket.ie - putting a friendly face on a friendly place

Unfortunately, more often than not, offline businesses think of having a website as a bit of an ‘extra’ that they don’t really need, but will get round to one day when they’re bothered doing it.  The majority of businesses - when they do get their website sorted - put a half arsed effort into it, just displaying their contact information, location, and some blurb they’ve not revised since 1991.  Thus, it’s refreshing when businesses do make the effort and treat their website not just as a necessity, but as a powerful marketing tool which they can use to engage current and potential customers, to help make the business better for all.  An excellent example is Organicsupermarket.ie, courtesy Ray at Intrigue and Ken Stanley.

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Kelkoo sold by Yahoo! - bit of a dumb move?

News has been circulating over the weekend about the Yahoo! disposal of Kelkoo, and now some of the finer details are starting to seep through.  Seems that Yahoo! got rid of their price comparison shopping site for around €100 million - quite a hit on the €475 million they paid for it in 2004 (but surely they made some profits from it in the meantime?).  But why sell now?  Bit of bad timing, no?

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Youtube goes widescreen - another move towards having d’telly on d’interweb?

If you look at Youtube, you’ll notice it’s gotten wiiiiiiiiiiiiider! As mentioned on their blog, Youtube have proclaimed:

“We’re expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience. And don’t worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player.”

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Bye, Bye Bebo!

It’s a sad, sad day.  After almost three years adding photos, sending ‘luv’, and commenting on other peoples pages i’ve done the dirty on Bebo, closed off my account, and run off to Facebook for good.  Why?  Mostly because of all the spam i’ve been getting on Bebo lately, and mostly because Facebook is just better.  Despite Facebook having heaps of applications - some very annoying - it beats Bebo hands down for usability, speed, and for its supremely good privacy settings.

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Rootcandy - an excellent administration theme for Drupal 6

One of the - small - downfalls of Drupal is the lack of a really nice built-in administration interface.  When you install Drupal, by default the admin area uses the same theme as the main site, and if you’ve a site with heaps of columns, or one that is just plain old thin, your admin interface will be a dog to use.  Rootcandy is an excellent admin theme for Drupal that is easy to use and will ensure your site building is a breeze.

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Creating a Drupal 6 theme - not as hard as it first seems!

Drupal 6 has come on in leaps and bounds since I first had a look at it a few years ago.  It’s now powering new projects i’m working on, including Shares.ie, Competitions.ie, and Ewine.ie.  I’ve used the wonderful oDesk to outsource some of the work, and have a contractor integrating Keiths excellent css layout for Shares.ie into a Drupal 6 theme.  Tonight, however, I thought i’d spend an evening multitasking by watching the excellent Munster-All Blacks match, whilst at the same time having a go at integrating Keiths Competitions.ie design into a Drupal theme myself.

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Why PPC, CPA, and display advertising can live happily ever after

There is increased, heated debate about the future of advertising online.  Each and every time I get my copy of NMA delivered through the door, I read articles by ‘experts’ who say PPC is the next big thing, display advertising is dead, and affiliate marketing is a dirty game packed full of dodgy coupon code site owners, and inexperienced buffoons.  Everyone seems to be fighting their own corner, and forgetting the reality of digital advertising - PPC, CPA, and display advertising compliment each other, and always will.

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Compare.ie traffic up 340% month-on-month

Santa is being very nice to Compare.ie so far this year.  The site soft launched about two and a bit months ago, we’re up to about 20k unique visitors per month, and it’s growing increasingly quickly.  Just checking the stats (i’m a statsaholic!), so far this month the site is up 340% from last month.  Happily, i’m seeing lots of returning visitors, and about 1,500 people have opted to receive our ‘Money saving deals’ newsletter.

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Old Quinnsworth TV Ads

One of the most ingenious bits of Irish marketing back in the eighties was Maurice Pratt, the Marketing Manager for Quinnsworth, deciding on a TV advertising strategy that included him starring in their TV ads, highlighting various in store offers.  Some of these (for the time!) were quite ‘high tech’, and i’ve stumbled across one of the best of them via Youtube.  Darth Vader also stars in this epic ad - and some outtakes are below too.  Enjoy!

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