You can find out about making more money when you’re selling your car yourself at Car Auctions Live, see the website’s new article directory.

Car Auctions Live is a car sales website for selling and buying cars online in Ireland.

Designed and built by New Odyssey, this site has a custom auction fuctionality that allows registered members to post images and details of the vechile they are selling. Members can bid on cars and get regular updates via email about the auctions.

Membership is FREE and it’s easy to sign-up.

New Odyssey are providing a monthly search engine optimisation and maintenance support service for this site as well as building new content including articles of interest for Irish motorists.

It’s a pleasure working with website owner Adrian Randles. Adrian’s 18 years in the retail motor industry marks him out as a specialist in his field. His deep understanding of what buyers and sellers of cars want and expect tranfers seamlessly to online car trading.

Adrian’s specialist knowledge of the car market plus New Odyssey’s web development and search optimisation skills makes for a powerful combination.

We look forward to seeing CarAuctionsLive.ie become Ireland’s number 1 car auction site.

Visit Car Auctions Live.

Contact New Odyssey to discuss your web business requirements.

As New Odyssey near the close of our first year in business we would like to recommend a useful resource for other start-up enterprises in County Kerry.

If you are involved in a start-up business in Kerry you will benefit from talking to the enterprise managers at Kerry County Enterprise Board. They offer support and advice that will help guide you through the early stages of business set-up in Kerry. Kerry CEB can assist you with training, feasibility research and funding in some cases.

Visit the Kerry County Enterprise Board website.

Also visit the publications page which has useful information for enterprises. Download the resources to view, http://www.kerryenterprise.ie/publications.htm.

New Odyssey understands what it is like to face the challenges of being in a start-up business in Ireland. We also understand that value for money is high on every entrepreneur’s list of priorities.

With that in mind we have developed a special low-cost, high quality web service for small and new businesses offered through our Starter Websites packages.

This service is dedicated to providing you with affordable websites so you can get your business on-line quickly and at a great price. We look after the complete set-up of the site for you, all you need do is provide text and photos.

All our Starter Website packages include a FREE domain and FREE hosting for your first year on-line.

Visit Starter Websites to view prices, special offers and full details of service.

Best regards,
Peter.

P.s. Good luck with your new business!

P.p.s. Also visit the Young Entrepreneur Website and Kerry Entrepreneur Development websites for news and useful information.

We’re often asked about methods for outsourcing link building to ensure quality inbound links. The truth is bad ‘Spammy’ inbound links can damage your websites position so it’s vital to approach the outsourcing of link building carefully.

Here’s a couple of possibilities you can use to manage your outsourcing of this important service, particularly when using a new contractor.

Take Steps To Avoid ‘Spammy’ Links

Request a list of websites from your contractor BEFORE they start link building to ensure there are no Spammy sites in the list. Alternatively, research suitable sites yourself and forward the list to your contractor.

Reciprocal Links Email Copy

Ask your contractor to write an email that will be sent to request reciprocal links from other sites. Review the copy and make necessary changes it to ensure it’s suitable before sending.

Give Your Contractor Some Guidelines To Follow

Say you wanted 500 inbound links, you might break it down like this:

• Forums = 20%
• Blogs = 20%
• Software download sites and/or directories = 20%
• Related Websites = 40%

Spread the work out over weeks or months so search engines don’t see ‘zero’ inbound links on Monday and ‘500’ inbound links on Tuesday. They might ’sandbox’ your website under the suspicion of Spam because of the sudden shift in popularity.

Contact New Odyssey For SEO and Link Building

R’evolution!

Seán Weafer’s new website and blog www.SeanWeafer.com is live.

“Seán Weafer has become an outstanding coach and mentor. He has the ability to assimilate complex concepts in effective human behaviour and convert them into interesting and informative lessons in leadership.

Oceans apart in our environmental and cultural upbringing, Seán and I have experienced synergy together in an unspoken professional partnership and peer relationship in helping leaders lead”
Denis Waitley ~American behavioural psychologist and Author

About Seán’s New Custom WordPress Website and Blog

Seán wanted a new look for his blog. He provided a logo as reference and after the initial brief New Odyssey presented a Jpeg design for the new homepage. After a review with the client and further tweaking of the design we settled on the current home page look. We also discussed and agreed on the templates for the static pages and blog section of the site.

Seán writes regular and substantial posts for his blog so we decided to work with WordPress as the website platform.

We added some extra WordPress plug-ins to allow readers to social bookmark blog posts. Seán’s twitters will also show in the sidebar of the blog pages.

The added benefit for Seán is that he can update text on every page and posts in his website with the easy to use WordPress editor. It’s a mini Content Management System (CMS) that enables Seán and his team to maintain his site in-house.

More Custom WordPress Websites

New Odyssey are currently working on a number of custom design websites with blogs (including another web site for Seán). Contact Peter or Gerry to discuss your Custom WordPress Website Now.

• Peter: 087 9767812
• Gerry: 0872789950
• Email Us

New Odyssey are currently working in partnership with a number of print graphic designers offering full print layout and design services to our clients.

If you are a working for yourself as a print graphic designer we want to hear from you. Send us your details via email and we’ll get back to you.

Email info@newodyssey.ie with the subject line ‘Print Graphic Designers‘.

Thanks!

New Odyssey have just launched phase #1 of the redevelopment of www.BabyStuffHire.com for MFB Travel Equipment Hire Limited.

The clients have opted for a service level agreement and the website is scheduled for regular work including search engine optimisation, internet marketing, additional front and back end features, product updates and additional content.

Baby Stuff Hire provide child travel equipment for hire to parents travelling in Ireland. This was solely a business to customer service but is expanding into a business to business service in 2008. The companies goal is to provide child travel hire equipment nationwide through their partners and agents.

Go to www.BabyStuffHire.com.

New Odyssey have completed testing the Irish language version of the MODx Web Content Management System and it has been accepted for inclusion on the official MODx website.

The MODx team have also created an Irish language sub forum which now sits proudly amongst the Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Persian forums (see http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?board=17.0).

The Irish translation which we have developed with the assistance of Foras na Gaeilge available at http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,20006.0.html. This is freely available for any Irish language enthusiasts to download. Users can switch between English and Gaeilge when using the system.

To coincide with this launch of the Irish version of MODx, New Odyssey are be offering a bi-lingual web development service using the MODx system. Contact us.

 Find out more about MODx Content Management System

Content Management Systems (CMS)

When you choose to adopt our content management system (MODx) you are getting a lot more for your money than is first apparent. MODx is much more than a content management system. It is actually a complete web development framework packed with built-in features which enable you to create blogs, membership features, e-newsletters, podcasts etc. Once the basic MODx system has been installed on your website all these features (plus many, many more) will be available to you to simply “switch on” as your business grows.

E-Commerce

Once a business has established a website, very often the next thing that they think about is selling their products and services online. New Odyssey offer a very cost effective e-commerce solution using the open source CubeCart shopping cart system. CubeCart can be totally customised to match the “look and feel” of your existing website. It combines a very rich user experience with a powerful backend administration system which helps you manage your online business with the minimum of fuss.

Customer Management Systems (CRM)

Once you have established an online web presence and maybe developed sn online store, you may be getting to the stage where you need a tool to help manage your customers.

This is where CRM enters the equation. At New Odyssey we have worked with our clients to develop an integrated approach to CRM centred around the very powerful vTiger open source CRM system.

Typically this approach involves taking feeds from your website (e.g. enquiries) or from your e-commerce applications (e.g. sales from your online store) and integrating this information into a customer management system.

CRM can be as simple or as complex as your business requires. Over time it allows you build up a wealth of information about your customers and can become a powerful marketing tool. In addition a CRM system can be used to automate back office administration such as issue of quotes and invoices. It also provides detailed reporting and analysis of sales activity.

CRM is not a simple quick fix. To be done properly it is necessary for the developers to understand your business process and ensure that the delivered CRM system suits your business.

To ensure that this is the case New Odyssey spends a lot of time with our clients during the development of CRM systems and it usually requires a lot more client involvement than would normally be required for the development of a standard website or e-commerce website.

MODx Content Management – Create Web Links

Hyperlinks, commonly known as web links, are a core and fundamental on-line tool. Although we have grown accustomed to using the simple web link without a second thought, they are still one of the most powerful tools available enabling people to communicate and share content on the World Wide Web.

Create Links In Your Website

This tutorial gives instructions in how to create web links in your website, enabling you to link to pages, link to images, link to video, link to sound files and link to documents within your own website and to other websites.

Enough talking, you want to start creating web links in your website so let’s begin!

1. Login into MODx
2. Click ‘Preview’ to view the website with the QuickEdit regions visible.
3. Click the editable region you want to add the link to
4. Select the text you want to link to the target web page, image or document.
5. In the quick edit toolbar click the Insert/edit link button (the button looks like a chain link).
   

   A link properties dialogue box is now displayed. The “General” Tab has five input areas.

6. Link URL: In the link URL field add the URL of the web page or image or document you want to create a link to.
   

   It is necessary to use an absolute URL if you are linking to another website. An absolute URL uses the full web page address including the “http://” before the website name and may also include a sub-folder and a file name, e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/assets/images/filename.jpg

7. Anchors: This tutorial does not deal with anchors but a future update will include that information.
8. Target: The target field is set as default to “Open in this window/frame”. Leave this as the setting unless you want the page you are linking to open in a new browser window. If that is the case select one of the three remaining options that suits your purpose.
9. Title: Enter a title for your link. The title should be descriptive of the link’s purpose or target file.
10. Class: This tutorial does not deal with anchors but a future update will include that information.
11. Click Insert.
    

    The link is now inserted to the selected text. The link properties dialogue box is closed. You should be able to see the linked text in your QuickEdit window. If there is no custom styling applied to links in the website the new link you created should be blue and underlined.

12. Click Apply in the QuickEdit window.
    

    The QuickEdit window is closed and the changes have been published to the web.

13. Refresh your page to see the changes made to it (if it does not automatically refresh).
14. Click on the new link you created to test it.
    

    The target web page or document should load into your browser window.

Congratulations, you now know how to create web links!

This tutorial is one of a series explaining how to use MODx content management system for editing and updating your websites.

Are you managing your website’s content?

Enterprise Ireland’s ebusinesslive newsletter asked New Odyssey to simply explain what a content management system (CMS) is…

“It allows users to keep content on the site up-to-date without having to go to a designer,” says Gerry Forde, technical director of content management provider New Odyssey.

Gerry also explained that there is a financial incentive for website owners to use CMS because they can cut out the middle-man and save money they would have paid a web developer to make the updates for them. This can add up to insubstantial savings over time.

Read the full article here: http://www.ebusinesslive.ie/newsletter/Story/4/974/ob.html/195

Save Money and Gain Control of Your Website

So, if you your answer to “Are you managing your website’s content?” is “no”, maybe it’s time to contact New Odyssey to find out how we can help you save money and gain control of your website.