Reverb Studios Blog » Latest News

Reverb Studios Reviews Suggestion

Leon — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:00:24 +0000

Customer Reviews of a companies products or services have become a very big deal online in recent years. Research has shown that if someone reads a positive review of your offering or service online they will be most of the way to buying from you!

On my own blog, the Reviews Category consistently gets more hits than any other and I myself would always look for reviews before buying anything.

I have recently setup a partnership with Ireland’s leading supplier of Review software for websites, LouderVoice. They can supply you with very simple to use plugins for your site that will allow visitors and clients to Rate your service or product and leave comments directly on your site. These reviews can be displayed prominently and should lead to greater sales conversions and excellent customer feedback. Customer reviews can also be routed to Twitter and Facebook for maximum exposure for your site.

Visit www.LouderVoice.com/About for more detailed information or to signup.

Please use the Partner code LV-REVERBSTUDIOS if you decide it’s for you!

Leon.

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Domain and Hosting Renewal Advice

Leon — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:03:49 +0000

I’m prompted to write this after a recent experience with a client who ignored my once yearly invoice for Domain and Hosting renewal a little too long (one of many!). If you have a website then you will almost definitely get a yearly or monthly bill from either your hosting company or web designer for 2 things at least:

Domain or Website Address Renewal
Website Hosting

You never actually own your web site address you just rent it for periods but once you are renting it no one else can have it.

Your hosting is also rented and this is basically website space you rent so the files/pages (and emails) on your site have somewhere to exist and be shown to the world.

You need to make sure you pay these bills as soon as the invoice comes in because if you don’t and possibly without warning, your web address could expire automatically and your site will go down. If it’s expired longer than the few weeks grace period you get then you’ll be faced with a hefty bill to recover it. If you wait a couple more months you can avoid the hefty bill and your address might come back up for registration but anyone else could buy it too. All this time your site will be down.

NB – Don’t rely on your web or hosting company to pay the bill on your behalf, sort things out for you or chase you too much for the money. They will often have a lot less to lose than you if your site goes down.

I personally have a policy of not paying to renew clients domains/hosting until I receive payment first.

Leon.

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Wordpress and Realex Integration

Leon — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:30:33 +0000

I am very pleased to announce that proper Credit Card and Laser transactions using Realex processing can now be taken on Wordpress powered sites via the Shopping Cart plugin from Tribulant. I think this is a significant development considering both the recent popularity of Wordpress as a full website content management and E-commerce system and the position Realex occupies as one of the world’s most popular credit card processors. I am also glad to have personally initiated, advised and funded the integration.

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Advertising in Leitrim

Leon — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:02:00 +0000

I’m running a new site www.AboutLeitrim.ie which aims to collect and display all kinds of Leitrim News from Property and Jobs to Entertainment and Local Services information. I hope that this site will become a great resource for anyone interested in Leitrim, living and doing business in it, or maybe considering a move here. It’s well on the way to achieving this.

Over the last few months since the site was launched it has generated more and more traffic. Here are some stats for the past couple of months:

I’d like to offer a 30% discount on the Advertising Rates to both my Leitrim Based clients and members of the Leitrim Business Network. You can Contact Me if you are interested in this offer or require further information.

Advertising online is fast becoming the most efficient way to spend marketing resources and having an ad on a well trafficked and relevant site like AboutLeitrim.ie should be very useful.

Regards,

Leon.

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Custom Web Site and Wordpress Theme Design

Leon — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:16:48 +0000

After a year or 2 of installing Wordpress for clients and using initially free, now commercial themes, I’ve now acquired the ability (after extensive messing around!) to design customised layouts and themes for this content management system. Using ready made templates will still be much more efficient and cheaper to the client of course but for people who require highly customised web design while keeping an easy to use CMS, and can afford it, I can now design a look and feel based on full design specs provided by the client.

Prices dependent on specs.

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New Site Design for Reverb Studios

Leon — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:33:44 +0000

I’m sad to say goodbye to my iPhone styled site which has lasted longer than a lot of other versions I’ve had in recent times. However every site needs a face lift every now and then as content becomes old or you find new ways of expressing yourself or new technology becomes available. My old site was a little slow to load and had a little too much going on content and link wise so I decided it was time to freshen things up and simplify a bit.

Here’s a list of notes digitally scribbled on my iPhone note application over the course of a week or so indicating what I wanted from my new design in terms of look, content and navigation and I’m proud to say I think I’ve achieved it all. I think most of the points apply to most sites too:

Minimalist both in terms of content and design,
Built for speed,
DIV/CSS based as opposed to HTML on the old site,
Suggest efficiency,
Suggest hi-tech,
Some fancy hi tech features,
Hi-res fixed background image,
Minimize vertical scrolling, use anchors,
Mostly gray scale not black,
Use color schemes,
Use transparency fx,
Very simple and consistent navigation,
Simple direct content,

The color scheme I went with but modified slightly was (appropriately named) “Web Designer” from the Adobe Kuler site.

The smooth scrolling navigation effect was achieved using the “Smooth Scroll” Javascript script which works with Anchor Links only.

I like the new look and feel but will probably do a little tidying up for a while!

Please leave your comments.

www.ReverbStudios.ie

Leon.

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New Membership and Content Management Services

Leon — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:39:41 +0000

I’ve learned a few new tricks lately! For those of you with a wordpress powered site I can now setup a Registration and Membership section with which you can offer “Members Only” sections with free/premium content available only to those who submit their details to you. Another handy tool for client database generation!

I can also now apply content management to existing static sites enabling site owners to change textual content and upload images as well as change things like Meta keywords and descriptions for each page. This is a quicker and less expensive option than rebuilding your site with a full featured CMS.

Contact me for more details.

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Reverb Studios TV

Leon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:00:53 +0000

I’d like to announce my new site www.ReverbStudios.tv which is a Video Blog featuring IT, Tech and Leitrim related videos and screen tutorials. There are also a selection of interesting videos from Youtube. If anyone has a relevant video of less than about 10 mins in length that they’d like on the site then let me know! Reverb Studios TV is the first in a number of new websites I have planned under the Reverb studios brand. Others planned include an Online Course website, a Social Networking site and an Online Shop open to all sellers.

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My Blogging Stats

Leon — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:06:14 +0000

Further proof that Blogging works to drive traffic to your site! The first dip on the 12th week of April was about when I switched hosting..the second is this week so still counting!

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Blogging, SEO & Hits

FREE Google Analytics Setup

Leon — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:38:02 +0000

I’d just like to announce that I’m now including free Google Analytics installation on all sites that I build for clients. Monthly stats reports will be sent to the client’s primary email address.

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FREE PC Support Name Change

Leon — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:07:00 +0000

I’ve decided to change the address of my free PC support blog from the long winded www.pcsolutionsireland.com to www.pcproblems.ie in the hope that it will be better suited to the search engines. Both domains will work for a while untill I decide whether to keep the old one or not.

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Living and Working in Leitrim

Leon — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:15:18 +0000

Myself and my partner moved to Leitrim from Dublin (Kimmage & Tallaght) in August 2003. She used to live there briefly as a child and her family have been coming boating on the Shannon for years. We were helping her father find a house to buy and we spotted a very nice one for him lakeside in Jamestown, a cute little village 2/3 miles from the epicenter of Leitrim, Carrick-on-Shannon.

Before we knew what was really happening, her father had bought the house and offered it to us to rent for a few years until he could move there permanently himself. Neither of us had any real ties to Dublin so we decided to go for it for the crack! During the 2 days in which we made the move we had some of the best weather I’ve ever seen in Ireland and when everything was unpacked we went and sat at the end of our new garden, had a beer and watched the sun go down over the lake! Why would anyone want to live anywhere else was the predominant thought!

I took to Leitrim like a duck to water, despite living all my life in a housing estate in Kimmage and it remains one of the best decisions of my life. We are both now part of the local community with me running a sucessful Web Design business and my partner managing an afterschool. You couldn’t drag us back to Dublin even for a visit! I feel more like a Leitrimer than I ever did a Dubliner!

So just to outline some of the benefits of moving to Leitrim:

Great scenery with lakes, rivers and hills a plenty.
Great community spirit and friendliness.
Fresh Air.
Cheaper cost of living (my car insurance halved!).
No Traffic.

From a business perspective, Leitrim has some fantastic supports also and I availed of some of them when starting my own business in 2004/2005. Leitrim Enterprise provided me with mentoring and financial assistance to get me off the ground and I havn’t looked back since! I continue to avail of their excellent Business Network Events.

Here are some useful links if you are considering moving to or setting up business in Leitrim:

Leon.

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New Baby Girl!

Leon — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:11:22 +0000

So after nearly 6 years from the initial decision to try for a baby and after much infertility treatment, pain, emotion, mileage, financial outlay and nerves – today at 8:34am our daughter finally arrived and about 2 weeks earlier than expected! Labor and pregnancy went well. She is 6 pounds five ounces and is doing fine. Photos below:

This will be my last post in the now strangely named ‘infertility category‘ but I will leave all posts up for posterity as a record of our experience and in the hope that it will give other childless and infertile couples hope that with the help of modern science, great doctors, nurses and midwives, they too can realise their dreams of having children..

Leon.

* UPDATE*

The baby’s name will be:

“Hanne Jane Quinn”

Its the Danish version/spelling of “Hannnah” which means ‘Grace’ or ‘Thanks’ which is appropriate considering we have a lot of people to thank for her arrival! Emer used to work in Denmark as a child minder and loved the country. One of the children she looked after was “Hanne”.

To quote my friend – “Welcome to the world Hanne Jane Quinn, we hope you enjoy your stay”

One of the first pics!

Eimear was and is brilliant.

A bit scared she’ll break!

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Optimise Your Website

Leon — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:45:14 +0000

I’m currently offering an affordable Search Engine Optimisation package for 395 Euros which should help your existing website to perform a little better online and hopefully bring more sales leads at a time when they might be most needed!

The package includes a Full SEO Audit of your web site including:

Google Analytics installation and auto monthly email reports.
Relevant Keyword Analysis.
Content Review.
Competitor research.
Linking Analysis.
Sitemap Installation.
Google Adwords advice.

I will provide a detailed report and list of recommendations on completion of the survey as well as making the changes required.

Contact Me for more info.

Leon.

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Broadband in Leitrim

Leon — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:31:23 +0000

Just came across this website recently which proposes to have up to date info on Eircom broadband rollout – www.broadbandatoz.ie – Click HERE to see the current plans for Leitrim. Nice to see my own locality Drumsna is to have broadband by the end of 2009, I’ve only been waiting 5 years now!

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Want to Sell Online?

Leon — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:46:33 +0000

I’ve been messing with a new, simple and cheap shopping cart system which can be plugged into any wordpress driven website which most of mine are. It might be a suitable alternative to a full featured and expensive e-commerce system if your needs are simple.

It features the following:

Shopping Cart.
1 Page Checkout.
Multiple Payment Options incl Paypal and Cheque.
Categories and Brands.
No limits on Products.
Automated Digital Purchases.

Contact Me for further info and pricing.

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Blog 1 Year Old!

Leon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:32:23 +0000

Today, the Reverb Studios Blog is exactly one year old (heres my first post!) and its been a great year business wise for me. Whether the blog is responsible in some way or not I’m not sure but Blogging has been a great excercise for me in a lot of ways and its definetly brought more visitors to my site and increased my profile on the net. As of now, I’ve posted about 160 Articles in 13 different Categories and received about 180 comments from various visitors. I regularly get between 50 to 100 unique visits a day compared to about 5 to 20 this time last year!

Thanks to all Visitors and Contributors,

Leon.

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Blogging, SEO & Hits

Google Analytics Services

Leon — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:55:53 +0000

I’ve been studying the more complicated aspects of the Google Analytics Website Statistical service recently and can now offer advanced help with instalation of this professional service for monitoring traffic to your Website or Blog.

I can add the Google Analytics tracking code on your website or blog and setup the following features:

Basic:

Your most visited pages
Referring sites traffic (who is linking to you)
The Keywords& Phrases that lead people to your site
Your visitors Browsers and Screen Resolutions
Your visitors Internet Speeds
Visitor Locations
Site Bounce Rate

Advanced:

Setup Goals and monitor visitors activity on the most important parts of your site
Setup Funnels to monitor paths taken through your site ie – Checkout process completion
Setup e-commerce values and visualize your click through rate, ie – total visitors versus visitors that buy from you.
Block your own website visits

I can either provide access to your own stats or provide detailed monthly email reports.

Using a statistical package like Google Analytics on your site is an essential process to better understand your visitor trends, how they find you and what they do while on your site. The statistics can give you invaluable information on how best to optimize your site and maximize its marketing impact.

Leon

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Woopra Website Stats Review

Quoted on SEO site!

Leon — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:40:34 +0000

I’m proud to have a few of my words quoted on renowned Keyword and Search Engine Optimization site Wordtracker.com. My words were taken from a comment I left on an interview with Peter Kent, author of SEO for Dummies in which he lambasted Web Designers for not having a clue about SEO. I disaggreed!

Heres the original interview – www.wordtracker.com/academy/peter-kent

Heres the article in which my words were quoted – www.wordtracker.com/academy/roundup-newsletter-12

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Affordable Websites

Leon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:14:28 +0000

Over the last year or two I’ve managed to streamline my web design process, making the process of building sites easier, quicker & more efficient while at the same time offering better, feature rich and much cheaper sites to clients.

All of this is made possible by using a ready made website framework and content management system which includes modular extendibility, allowing for the simple plugging in of new and varied features to suit the client’s requirements and growth.

With the addition on my main site of a new Template Browser, the client can also now choose their own website, layout, look and feel, requiring only the addition of a color scheme and branding/logos to finish the site.

The software used for the website framework/backend represents the very latest, state of the art web programming and comes ready optimized for the search engines. The software also includes blogging/latest news functionality, a proven method of attracting visitors and interaction to your site.

Leon.

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New Template Browser

Leon — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:42:25 +0000

In association with Template Monster, I can now offer full Template Chooser/Browser functionality on the main Reverb Studios Site with options to purchase templates and view full working demos of your chosen template before purchase.

I’d say one of the trickiest parts of web design or installation is getting a grip of how the client wants the site to look and feel. Short of sketching out a very detailed specification for you, its difficult for a potential client to convey how they want the site laid out and what colors to use. Designing a site and having a client dismiss it entirely sending you back to the drawing board is not much fun either!

What better and more efficient way for a client to choose how they want their site to look than to browse through a large and varied selection of professional level templates picking out one or two they’re happy to go with!?

My new Template Chooser lists the prices of all templates and allows you to see a full working demo of the site before purchase. You can either buy the template yourself, directly from my site and email or upload the files to me or let me know which template you’d like to go with by providing the template number.

All templates include a full featured, easy to use Content Managment System and professional build quality & standards compliance.

View the Template Chooser.

Leon

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Adobe AIR Desktop Applications

Leon — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:30:57 +0000

I have been working with the new Adobe Air framework which allows for building Flash desktop applications and widgets which draw data from the internet.

To see Adobe Air in action please download our own custom created Desktop Feed Reader which will allow you to view the latest posts from the Reverb Studios Blog on your own desktop *

Heres how it looks and works:

Click here to download and install the “Reverb Blog Adobe AIR Desktop Application” .

If anyone would like me to plugin your own preferred feed and send on a downloadable, installable application for your blog or site, let me know.

(* Requires windows XP and an internet connection to run properly. Also requires the Adobe Air Installer to be installed first, you can get it at http://get.adobe.com/air/)

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Google Analytics Adobe Air Desktop Program

Blogging, SEO & Hits

Leon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:19:10 +0000

Was just looking at my Google analytics stats for the last couple of years since I first set up analytics and I noticed something that could definitely be construed as proof that blogging benefits your website hits and general internet presence. See Below:!

If you notice the dates, theres a nice upward curve from about when I started blogging in earnest, you can have a look at my Archives Page to see the correlation between this graph and my first tentative blogging months!!

HERE is some more info on the SEO value of Blogging & Wordpress in particular.

Leon.

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New Discussion Forum and FAQ Section

Leon — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:25:56 +0000

I’ve decided to add a Forum/Discussion Board/Questions & Answers section to the Reverb Studios Site. The aim is to have visitors ask questions in any of the preset categories which I or others can then attempt to answer to the best of our abilities.

This forum should be better suited to Q & A type discussion than the main blog here so lets see how it goes!

Feel free to post anything – www.reverbstudios.ie/discuss

Leon.

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Reverb Studios Wordpress Theme

Leon — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:46:43 +0000

I’ve done a lot of Wordpress Content Managment System Installations for clients recently and while its absolutely fantastic it does have one drawback for a web designer (which I used to be!).

When you exclusively use wordpress to power clients sites you find your creative talents suffer a bit. You become a web site installer rather than designer and the only bit of creativity you get to engage in is logo or banner design or design tweaking so it can get a bit boring.

So I done a bit of research and eventually figured out how to design my own wordpress theme or template, borrowing the main wordpress framework and adapting elements of other themes so its a bit of a mashup. Its imaginatively entitled “Reverb” theme!!

If anyone wants to try it out and tell me how many flaws it has, heres a screenshot/download link!!:

(Click thumbnail to download)

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Alexa Page Rank

Leon — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:54:12 +0000

I’ve been keeping an eye on my Alexa Page Rank lately (like a website top of the pops list!) and it seems to be lower every day. Droppin’ like a stone it is and I’m chuffed. A few months ago I think I was about 5 million or something and right now I’m 363,800th most popular site on the internet for both this blog and the main Reverb site. I reckon its all down to blogging and my increasing amount of incoming links. Still happy days!

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New Style Switcher for Reverb Site

Leon — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:40:16 +0000

I’ve been torn recently between whether to continue to indulge my own preference for a dark coloured main Reverb Studios Site and most of the rest of the internet’s adoption of light coloured sites. I never liked to go with the flow and I reckoned if it looked good to me and was readable then leave it, no matter what everyone else said!

So I happened upon a method of having it both ways which is always best! At the top of each page on the Reverb Site to the right, you will see 2 links “view dark site >>” and “view light site >>”. The default when you first arrive on the site is for my preference of dark which I think looks the best and tidiest. The site is basically optimized to look better dark. But for the small minority of people who have difficulty reading light text on a dark background clicking “view light site” will more or less invert all colours. Dark backgrounds become white and white text becomes dark.

Let it never be said that I ignore minorities!

Leon.

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Sitecheck Review

Google and Yahoo, Partners?

Leon — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:53:04 +0000

Apparently the 2 biggest search engines/directories and 2 of the biggest companies on the planet are in talks about some possible merger. Its staggering to think of the size and power that any merged entity between these 2 giants could have and lots of groups are very unhappy at the prospect.

I’m not sure which camp I fall into. In general its usually not a good thing if any one company has a monopoly in any business sector as they can pretty much do and charge what they want and power can sometimes go to their heads. Many would site Bill Gates and Microsoft as an example of this! However in this case, Google already have most of the market covered and Yahoo the rest and has any body suffered?

People often ask me how Google make their money and I respond by mentioning their Pay per click advertising campaigns, paid for or pro versions of some of their software, etc.. but to be honest its hard to keep track of their revenue streams since they have their fingers in so many pies these days. Most people, me included only use Google for its basic functionality – searching the internet for information and I don’t pay them a cent for this service so I don’t see how any monopoly they might have would affect me but maybe I’m missing something?

Feel free to comment.

Leon.

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Google Rank Alexa Rank

Leon — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:58:47 +0000

Yay – Finally got off level 3 in Google rank for the main Reverb Studios site! Makes me feel that little bit more important now that I’m 4. Also, since last week when my site was about the 1,000,050th most popular/important site on the internet according to Alexa, I’m now the 589,662nd most important – not sure what I’ve done to rise nearly half a million points in one week?? I might drop down again tomorrow but for the moment I’ll bask in the glory. Go on ye good thing..!!

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Web Design Leitrim

Leon — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:02:58 +0000

I’ve registered the domain www.webdesignleitrim.ie in an attempt to make it easier for people to find my business and services online. It should also be easier to remember and easier to pronounce over the phone than Weeveb Studios! You don’t always realize when you’re picking a business name and starting up just how important it might be in the future! Hopefully it will help Google find me too!

Leon

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Reverb Studios Blog » Latest News

Reverb Studios Reviews Suggestion

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Domain and Hosting Renewal Advice

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Wordpress and Realex Integration

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Advertising in Leitrim

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Custom Web Site and Wordpress Theme Design

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New Site Design for Reverb Studios

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New Membership and Content Management Services

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Reverb Studios TV

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My Blogging Stats

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FREE Google Analytics Setup

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FREE PC Support Name Change

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Living and Working in Leitrim

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New Baby Girl!

“Hanne Jane Quinn”

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Optimise Your Website

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Broadband in Leitrim

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Want to Sell Online?

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Blog 1 Year Old!

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Google Analytics Services

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Quoted on SEO site!

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Affordable Websites

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New Template Browser

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Adobe AIR Desktop Applications

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Blogging, SEO & Hits

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New Discussion Forum and FAQ Section

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Reverb Studios Wordpress Theme

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New Style Switcher for Reverb Site

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