Online with WicklowToday.com

Look Familiar?

Despite the bursting of the 'dot com' bubble, the Internet is still big and getting bigger. Over one third of Irish homes now have a computer and most of these have Internet access, while many more people access the Internet from work. According to webmaster Graham Caswell WicklowToday aims to provide a focal point for matters relating to county Wicklow online.

The WicklowToday team includes veteran local reporter Tony Murphy from Newtown, who came on board following several years as a press secretary to Rathdrum-based Minister of State Joe Jacob. Arklow man Daniel New is the Operations Manager and general organiser, while Graham Caswell and Paul Byrne from Avoca do much of the technical work and fine-tuning. Paul's brother Ian is the principal investor in the venture and helps out with strategy.

WicklowToday.com: accessed in 32 countries

Although WicklowToday's offices are on Arklow's Main Street, the actual website is hosted on a server located in Pittsburg, Pennsilvania in the United States. "Location doesn't really matter on the Internet", says Graham, "We have a good hosting company who provide a good service and we are happy with them".

However, wherever it is located the WicklowToday server provides a multitude of statistics. For example, in March 4,000 people are projected to visit the WicklowToday.com website, generating over 50,000 page impressions - over 1,700 per day. Apart from the front page and the news section the most popular sections are the notice boards, the collection of hundreds of photographs of the garden county and, of course, the email facility. In fact, the WicklowToday email services have several hundred users, who check their email about 5,000 times per week!

Tony, Daniel and Graham at the WicklowToday offices in Arklow

Most visitors to WicklowToday.com are from Wicklow itself, but many people from all over the world log on as well. The WicklowToday server records hits from as far afield as South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Croatia, Singapore, Iceland, and even the Cayman Islands! All in all thirty two countries from around the world are represented in the WicklowToday server logs.

At the beginning of its fifth month in operation the WicklowToday team are pleased at the sucess of the site and at the direction it is going. Future plans for the months ahead include the development of a music section that will feature the works of county Wicklow musicians for download or for playing online. A new 'Dial-a-Service' business directory will also be up soon and a variety of other services and sections, including ecommerce facilities, may be added as the site develops.

WicklowToday.com may be a small fish in the world of Internet companies like Yahoo! and Amazon.com, but it is already the premier website of Wicklow on the Internet!