Birr Community Online

Please take a few minutes to read the information below, it will explain what this website is about, features available to all visitors and registered users and our policiies.

This website has been developed to provide all non-profit groups in the Birr District (not just Birr Town) with an internet presence where it doesn’t exist. All non-profit groups can claim their own space on this website and use it to effectively communicate with the local community. This is done by posting articles describing who they are, what they do, where they do it and anything else relevant to the group that the community may be interested in. Sporting groups can use the facilities on this website to publish results minutes after events have finished.

Posting of articles may also be done by individuals in the community who have a message they want to get out to the community. These can be about any subject relevant to Birr, old news, new news, local issues, etc. There are many articles in Local news and History reproduced with the permission of the editor of the Birr Review - which is published annually in Birr. Visitors to the website will also be given the opportunity to comment on posted articles if the author allows this.

Non-profit groups who have their own website can still avail of any of the features of this website, although in most cases this can be just a link to your own website.

The main objective of this website is to pull together details of all local community resources for the benefit of Birr. This will also be of immense benefit to other internet users ‘looking in’ to Birr - just think of the benefits to tourists who’ll be able to see what’s going on and where it’s going on from one website.

There are no charges for using any of these facilities - the only ‘cost’ involved is the contributor’s time - but posting articles is as simple as composing an email for those who post directly - for others it’s the same: compose the email and send it to us - we’ll publish it on your behalf.

This website is the place to show-case your group to the community and to the wider internet community, because we have a .ie domain name and are hosted in Ireland we expect to get maximum exposure through search engines like Google where the ‘pages from Ireland’ button is used. We would also request that any local websites link back to us.

As stated above, the target for this website is non-profit organisations, e.g. clubs, groups, associations. It is not our intention to run any form of commercial advertising - either locally or through platforms like Google. Our aim is to remain completely advertisement free.

Non-profit organisations who wish to claim their own space should contact us at admin@birr-comm.ie, once we have established the request is genuinely from a local organisation we will issue you with a logon that will allow you to post to your space - which will generally involve us setting up a new category.

When you contact us with your request please ensure you supply as many details as possible and we really need a telephone number to be able to contact you to explain how to post articles.

Everybody has access to the information posted on this website - there are additional features that can only be accessed by registered users. The registration process is simple - look for the ‘Register’ link above the Events Calendar - click on this - you will be asked for your name and email address - this must be a valid email address as you will need to retrieve your password from an email we will send to you. Once this is done you will have 2 additional items on the top of each page - ‘My Bookmarks’ and ‘My Options’. You can, of course, change your password to one that is easier to remember at any time by clicking on the ‘Profile’ link above the Events Calendar after you have logged in.

‘My Bookmarks’ are like bookmarks in your web browser - they will link directly to articles you have an interest in - an article can be bookmarked by clicking on the ‘Bookmark Post’ link at the end of each article. Your bookmarks will remain until either the article expires or you remove it yourself.

‘My Options’ allows you to customise your view of this website, you can replace the image on each page with another, change the colour of the side-bar or change the colour of the article text.These 2 features are only available to registered users since we store your details on our server so that they are in effect from wherever you access this site.

There is also a Local Events calendar that allows you to see what’s on at a glance - used in conjunction with the ‘My Bookmarks’ feature you can create your own itinerary of local events. Note that all Local Events will self-expire on the day the event concludes - so these will disappear from your bookmarks.

Other features include a ‘Ask a Question’ whereby visitors can ask a question about Birr and hopefully receive an answer from somebody in the community. This feature can also be used as a guestbook - if you just want to say hello to somebody. We also have a complete history of Birr weather going back as far as 1958 - the data for this has been extracted from the Central Statistics Office based on data recorded at Birr’s own weather station.

Over the coming months we will be introducing additional features, such as polls on local issues. In the meantime we would like to call on all non-profit organisations to make contact and use these facilities. Show-case your group but more importantly show-case Birr to the ‘outside world’.

What you see on this website today is just the start, it is dynamic in that it will grow day by day but we really do need local groups involvement to increase our content. So if you’re a member of a local group ask your committee - there’s nothing to lose.

Some of the items already on this website do not have photographs yet, people in Birr will know that the weather has not been kind over the last few months and rather than post photographs that wouldn’t do justice we will be addressing this as the weather gets better.

Now, a few comments on our policies. All articles published by groups will be checked for content - we are not in the business of censorship but any found to be offensive or contain unsuitable material will be removed. All comments will be moderated (i.e. checked) before they are published. We will be employing automatic anti-spam techniques to stop spammers getting through - spammers will not be tolerated.

Privacy - no personal details supplied by contributors will ever be shared with any third party or made available on this website without their permission. Email addresses supplied during the registration process will never be shared with any third party.