kildare.ie community site relaunched
NEWBRIDGE, 21 March 2002: by Trish Whelan & Brian Byrne. The Kildare Community Network website www.kildare.ie was relaunched last night in a new and more user-friendly format made necessary because of the sheer amount of information on the site and the numbers of people looking for access.
At a presentation of the new site in the Riverbank Cultural Centre in Newbridge, Kildare Community Network chairwoman Cllr Catherine Murphy reported that the site had attracted 640,000 visitors in in 2001 who downloaded 2.3 million pages.
The site was originally developed by Action South Kildare with the support of Kildare County Council, and was later integrated into KCC headquarters at St Mary’s as the Kildare Community Network. The core elements of the site are the local authority area, community development and business development.
In the revamped site, six new sub-portals have been developed to provide direct information on arts, business, tourism, community, education, and heritage.
“They were carefully chosen as areas where there was significant interest already,” Catherine Murphy told the audience in the Riverbank Auditorium. “We want this site to be the first place people will go to if they want to find out anything about Kildare, whether it is accessing services or information. But that can only happen if it is embraced by all of the components of the county.”
She said the site may well evolve for each town or village in County Kildare to provide regular contributions to the site and help keep both their own community and the wider county, or even people in other parts of the world informed on what is going on.
Kildare County Council chairman John O’Neill (pictured on left with Cllr Murphy) welcomed the invited audience of community representatives to what he said was a most important resource for the county. Afterwards, KCN manager Kevin Kelly demonstrated the essential elements of the site and encouraged those present to examine kildare.ie in more detail from their own homes. He said it was important that communities, businesses and organisations made their own contributions to the site and invited them to take advantage of the network resource.
The event concluded with a reception in the Riverbank Centre, during which musical group The Diviners performed and launched their first CD.
A gallery of photographs from the evening is available here.
©2002knn