Website News
Hey guys, Éamonn here again with a quick post to update ye about the website. We’re getting a lot of new visitors now and I felt a quick rundown regarding ‘what’s where’ and so on would be useful.
First of all, an apology to users of Internet Explorer. While Tom and Máire were in Canada and the States, they were able to log on to the site using various people’s browsers and let me know that all was not as it should be when using older versions of Internet Explorer. Those problems should be fixed now. For those of you who use Internet Explorer – or simply don’t know what browser you are using – I’ve put up a page detailing the basics about internet browsers and what you should look out for.
Secondly, I want to remind you all of our RSS service. For those of you unfamiliar with RSS, it’s a service principally used by those who visit more than one or two sites for their news. Rather than browsing around, you can set up an account with google or yahoo, etc, and have the content of these sites delivered directly to you as they are published, somewhat like a newsletter. You can subscribe to the feed at any time by clicking on the orange button below the date of each post. Some websites also use this feature to syndicate out our content on their webpages (the ACPS Region X site is a good example).
About every three months or so, I like to do a post letting people know how the website is doing, and, of course, asking for feedback. Well, that time has rolled around again and I’m very please to say that August and September were smashing months for us here. While August, with the Clifden Show, tipped the scales at 1236 visitors for the month, September was equally successful, with 1144 people visiting 3005 times and viewing 11703 pages! Fantastic figures. (If you’re more familiar with ‘hit counters’, that translated to 193,932 hits over two months.) In order, the visitors mostly came from Ireland, the States, Great Britain and Canada, with others coming from as far afield as Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Azerbaidjan, Russia and Chile. Dad can now embarrass me on a truly global scale. ;)
We’ve just re-designed the Ponies section which includes Ponies for Sale, Ponies through the Years, a page for Blue Smokie himself (he wouldn’t share), and pages for our Young Stock and Broodmares. It needs some fleshing out here and there, but we’re getting there finally! I’ve also streamlined the sidebar a bit, so everything there is a little clearer.
Coming up in the month ahead Tom will be recounting his trip to Canada and the U.S. in greater detail, we should have more details about his forthcoming book, and we’ll also be having a look at a new website being launched for another Connemara Pony Stud here in Co. Galway. As always, we’ll be publishing news as it comes to our attention and hopefully alongside some good photos!
