In a rare occurrance yesterday Michele Neylon, Managing Director of Blacknight,  put on a suit. It wasn’t however for a funeral as one might expect when you’re dealing with Michele and suits. It was hopefully for the birth of something great. It was of course if you’ve been following any of our recent blog posts for the IIA’s BRICS conference for which we’re one of the key sponsors.
One staff member with Blacknight commented on the suit situation “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of T-shirts cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.”

We attended in numbers (hey two is a number too) and we weren’t disappointed by the day’s events.

Rachelle one of our sales executives attended a number of the days sessions ( there were two running ) and she was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the presentations. Highlights of the days sessions for her was Sean O’Sullivan talking about the difficulties he and other companies are having finding and retaining staff. (Did we mention we’ve a number of positions open at the moment as we’re expanding). The shortage of staff session led on to the great CoderDojo session which if you’ve not checked it out and have kids of a certain age or are able to help out you should. Piers Dilon-Scott gave a talk on monitoring social media interactions. Then it was onto one of the more BRICS focused talks and “On the ground in China” by Denise McQuaid. BRICS if you’re not aware of it is the term used to describe the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and the underlying theme of the conference. Denise spoke on cultural and practical differences encountered. As a company with customers in around 100 different countries in the world we’re well aware of some of these.

One of the key speeches of the day was from Enda Kenny ( We knew there was a reason Michele was wearing a suit ) All in all rather good day. Much talking and networking was done, business cards handed out and of course should you wish to get in contact and were attending on the day you should now have our business cards if not you can still get in contact.

I Love My BRICS is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

technologyie-itunes (Photo credit: blacknight)

As some of you may know we also run a weekly podcast over on technology.ie

This week our guest was Paul Savage, who also provided a guest post on this blog previously. He talked to us about search engine optimisation and about some of the things to avoid.

If you’d like to learn a little bit about SEO then why not grab this week’s show? You can get it via the site or on iTunes. The interview with Paul is about

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Want A Few SEO Tips? is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

From now until the end of June you’ll be able to get a .be domain name for only €3.99 (registration or transfer)

What is .be?

Well it’s the country code for Belgium – the country that brings you all the nice beer and chocolates and is also home to a lot of other nice things.. (I’m meant to be on a diet, so I won’t talk about them!)

Of course “be” is also a very powerful word in the English language, so you can come up with some pretty slick “hacks” using “be”.

So what are you waiting for? Go grab a .be domain name and be the way you want to be!

Be Happy! is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

First off we’re going to give away a few .eu key rings – watch our Facebook page for details.

Secondly to help businesses that want to explore the EU market we’re offering a nice discount on .eu domain name registrations until the end of this week – a mere €4.99 / year.

Sound good?

Any questions – let us know!

Celebrate Europe Day is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

The list of finalists was announced last night and we’re really honoured to have made it this far. Best of luck to everyone!

Here’s our press release on the announcement that’s going out this afternoon:

Blacknight Finalist in Irish Social Media Awards
Ireland’s number one hosting company and domain registrar recognized for spectacular customer connection.

May 3, 2012 – Carlow, Ireland – Social media juggernaut, Blacknight is a finalist in four categories for the 2012 Irish Social Media Awards.

Held at Mansion House in Dublin on May 17, 2012, the second annual Irish Social Media Awards honor businesses in Ireland that raise the bar for Social Media use.

100 judges have helped bring the list of possible nominations down to just a handful of finalists. Blacknight are finalists in the following categories: Best Facebook Page for A Business (Owner Managed), Best Customer Care Using Social Media (Integrated), Best Blog of A Business, and Best Business Twitter Account Support, CRM.

Michele Neylon of Blacknight explains “We are ecstatic to be in the finals for four Irish Social Media Awards this year. We put a lot of care into our social media accounts and believe deeply in the importance of making a quality connection with our customers. I get teased a lot for the amount of time I spend on Twitter, Facebook and our blog but it clearly pays off.”

In 2011, Blacknight won the award for Best Business Twitter Account for Sales and Marketing at the inaugural Irish Social Media Awards.

Neylon advises: “It is no longer enough for businesses to simply have social media accounts. You have to put the heart of your business into connecting with your customers. Blacknight has always prioritised our relationship to our customers and have keep a constant dialog going and it has become an integral part of our business.”

Blacknight were early adopters of social media, using Twitter and Facebook long before it became an integral way for businesses to connect with customers. Blacknight have won several awards for use of social media, including awards for the prolific and sometimes irreverent Blacknight Blog.

For more information on the 2012 Irish Social Media Awards, visit http://socialmediaawards.com/
Follow the awards on Twitter @SocMediaAwards  #sockies

Bert’s Happy As Blacknight Made The Finals Of The Social Media Awards is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

So if you have your .com, .eu, .me or .co domain name already registered for a full 10 year period you can now do the same with your co.uk.

I’m a strong believer in “eating our own dogfood”, so I renewed several of my personal co.uk domain names this morning for the maximum time possible – and I now feel a lot calmer. (Some of the domains were ones I’d paid a premium for, so I always worried about them not being renewed)

If you’ve built up a successful online business or presence online your domain name is one of the cornerstones. Being able to lock that down for up to 10 years helps me sleep better at night!

If you’ve got more than a couple of domain names it can become quite messy dealing with them, but if you think of them like you would your car, or your gas cooker and give them their annual maintenance checkup things will run a lot more smoothly.

Check that the domains are correctly registered ie. they’re registered to YOU and NOT to some 3rd party. Make sure they’re registered correctly ie. if your company’s name has changed that the domain registration details have been updated to reflect this.

So if you have any UK domain names now’s the time to renew them for up to 10 years and be more at one (or ten) with them

Become At One With Your UK Domain is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Carlow, May 1st 2012

Blacknight announce sponsorship of the Irish Internet Association Annual Conference 2012 “Building BRICS”.

The conference, which will be held Thursday May 10, 2012 at Aviva Stadium, promotes a theme of  “Enabling Business Expansion” and will focus on social media, localisation and mobile.
The IIA Annual Conference is not just for tech businesses, but also for all businesses that want to grow their online presence and is designed as a way for providers and clients to meet

A longtime member of the Irish Internet Association, Blacknight value the opportunity to be involved in the conference. “We are pleased to support the IIA Annual Conference 2012,” Michele Neylon of Blacknight states. “Blacknight advocates getting Irish businesses online and are committed to giving those already online the tools to continue to succeed. The IIA Annual Conference is an excellent opportunity for Irish businesses to gain insight into the latest advances in the online marketplace.”
IIA 2012 speakers include: An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD, Sharon Walsh,
Marketing Director of Heineken and Deborah Lynch, Developer Technical Services Manager of Paypal.

Neylon continues: “The IIA Annual Conference is a fantastic way to connect with other tech and online business owners who are experiencing similar challenges and creating problem solving techniques. It is important for the Irish business community to learn from each other and continue to develop new ideas.”
The IIA Annual Conference aims to reach business owners, tech business owners, marketing professionals, strategists, and social media junkies. Previous conference audiences have consisted of a senior audience of decision makers with 39% having a C-level title or Director title. A further 29% are Managers. Delegates represent all industry sectors, 25% usually from outside Dublin and the organisation size matches the IIA’s member profile of 20% corporates, 30% medium sized enterprises and 50% SMEs. A predominantly private sector audience is expected in 2012.
Join Blacknight in supporting the IIA Annual Conference 2012.
Please visit http://www.iia.ie/events/iia-conference/ to register and learn more about the IIA Annual Conference 2012.
To learn more about Blacknight hosting and domain registration visit: http://www.blacknight.com

About Blacknight:
Blacknight are an Irish based, ICANN accredited domain registrar and hosting company. Recipients of several awards for their revolutionary use of social media, Blacknight are one of Europe’s most cutting edge Internet companies. Blacknight constantly seek to lead the way by introducing innovative solutions for its client base and provide dedicated servers and colocation as well as a comprehensive range of Microsoft Windows and Linux based hosting plans and domain name registration services to business globally.

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• Reblogged: Use Zemanta To Improve Your Blogging (Via Blacknight Blog) (zemanta.com)
• Blacknight Announce Available Positions In Carlow Office (blacknight.com)

Press Release: Blacknight Announce Sponsorship of IIA Annual Conference 2012 is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Here they are:

What do you think of them?

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New IE Domain Promotional Graphics – What Do You Think? is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

However if you are new to creating websites and unsure of typical pages or even a regular creator of websites using WordPress you may want to be able to upload a set of predefined pages and save a little time.

These can be pages like “Privacy Policies”, “Sitemaps” and “Contact”. I am sure that a “Products” page is pretty common also and an “About” page is also useful.

WordPress can help you with this nicely in its ability to import a data file containing these pages from a sample XML file.  There are many sites out there that have sample files with pages, posts and images that can populate your site quickly with content.  Most of these are targeted at WordPress theme creators to flesh out a site to make it look well populated and show off specific shortcodes , images and text formatting.

Any time I have used these I spend as long again deleting content that I didn’t want and it defeated the purpose.

So I decided to create my own sample file with a set of Pages that any site would benefit from. To start you need to get the sample file go to this location where I have created a sample WordPress XML file to upload to your new site.  Download the Sample WordPress file [zip format] and unzip it.

Then follow these really simple steps.

• Log on to your WordPress dashboard
• Go to Tools -> Import
• Select the Zip File Mentioned above
• Select Submit when uploaded
• Done

You now have several new pages with some sample content.

There are also several useful plugins for creating multiple blank pages and posts if you want to try a different way of creating pages and posts quickly.  Check these examples plugins on WordPress.org

• Simple Add Pages or Posts – Allows you create as many pages or posts as you want in seconds.
• Bulk Page Creator – Similar to Simple Add Pages

Speed Up Your WordPress Content Creation is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Image via CrunchBase

Paypal are making some subtle, yet important, changes in how they handle redirects and landing pages for their merchants ie. those of us who use Paypal as a method of accepting payments.

If you don’t accept payments using Paypal then this will not impact you.

At the moment if you are an Irish Paypal user you might be referring to paypal.ie, while UK users might be referring to paypal.co.uk.

As of May 1st 2012 Paypal will stop supporting these “localised” redirects and landing pages and will only support redirects to paypal.com

Here are a few examples:

Website Payment Standard HTML button code
<a form method=”https://www.paypal.de/cgi-bin/webscr”>
needs to be updated to
<a form method=”https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr”>

Express Checkout redirect URL

https://www.paypal.de/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&…

needs to be updated to

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&…

Digital Goods checkout redirect URL

https://www.paypal.de/incontext?…

needs to be updated to

https://www.paypal.com/incontext?…

IPN Postback URL:

https://www.paypal.de/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_notify-validate&..

needs to be updated to

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_notify-validate&..

If you’re already sending everything to paypal.com you won’t need to make any changes, but if you are referencing your local Paypal domain name eg. .ie in Ireland, .co.uk in the UK or .fr in France, then you need to switch over to using the .com

Any issues should be raised with Paypal’s support team (not ours please! )

Paypal Users – Check Your Code! is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies