www.sneem.com - Etienne Muller

Hello all of you folks out there. sneem.com has now been running uninterrupted since 20th Oct. 1998. It currently stands at around 260 pages and contains about 550 photographs.

The picture on the mail page has become quite popular. Thank goodness I am not getting mail from everyone who looks at it.

A surprising number of visitors are logging directly onto the Sneem home page by either typing in www.sneem.com in the address bar of their browsers or by just typing in sneem. This Illustrates the enormous value of the dot com suffix, particularly for places. Google is by far the biggest referrer to the site, leaving all other search-engines in the dust. A lot of the access points of google searches are web pages within sneem.com which have been searched.

There are many, referring websites which send a lot of traffic to sneem.com. These domains are good friends to sneem.com, though they may be unaware of it. This shows the importance of linking from other domains. If you have a website to which sneem.com is relevant you can help by putting in a link.

I first decided to set up www.sneem.com back in 2008, after being charged sixty pounds, plus vat, for a one-line link to my Brushwood Studios Gallery site. I felt that if I didn't get going on the Sneem project, someone else would, and I would end up paying an arm and a leg to be linked up to my own village's website. With this in my mind I kept my charges to the very minimum required to run a professional site. I wanted even kids to be able to afford to post a directory if they wanted to. Prices did not ever increase. This policy could only have worked if I had sufficient paying subscribers, and I would like to thank all of you who have made this possible.

During the past few years I have not sent out invoices, as I am in a quandry as to what direction the site should take.

The Sneem website was founded on the following premise. Firstly: if people find the site through searches for activities and areas of local interest, and they like what we have to offer, they will want to come and stay here. Secondly: the website should be a connection for absent Sneemites who would like to stay in touch with home base. This second principal has been made unnecessary with the advent of social media.

With valiant and necessary efforts being made on various fronts to put our village more firmly on the map than it already is; I sometimes feel that sneem.com, working quietly in the background, goes unnoticed behind the hectic agendas of other projects.

As an instant window to the world the website is of incalculable value to the town. I would like to put a lot more time into the site than I do, unfortunately the modern world seems to have turned time into a rare resource.

There are areas of the site that need expanding, and areas of interest that I am not clued into enough to do any justice. Anyone interested in contributing on - sports - history - fishing - the school - drama - music - absent friends - who's doing what now - genealogy - or any other subject relevant to Sneem - I would be very interested in hearing from you....

e-mail - Please put "Sneem website" in the subject line as I get lots of spam and would hate to delete your letter by accident.

Etienne Muller - Brushwood Studios - Sneem - Co. Kerry - 064 6645108

My thanks to all of you out there who sent e-mail and encouragement. Keep checking back.

Etienne