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Like many other Irishmen at the moment, I am getting ready to move, not to Australia, England or Canada, I just got back from 20 years in the USA after all. No, I am moving from being a home brewer to being a commercial brewer.

Black Donkey Brewing Ltd is based in Ballinlough in Co. Roscommon, and we are in need of a website for [url:3cfcmm9p]http://www.blackdonkeybeer.com[/url:3cfcmm9p]. The brewery is still in development, but we hope to be open and producing by spring of next year.

We are looking for a firm, or an individual, with whom we can develop a long term working relationship, and who has a proven SEO track record. Ideally our developer will like craft beer, or at least understand the craft beer/artisanal products market. We have never worked with an Irish developer before, and with the workload involved in trying to get the brewery setup, we find we don't have much time for randomly surfing and looking at portfolios. We would really appreciate some referrals/links to great portfolios, or you can PM me with your experiences, good or bad, with Irish web developers. We will be happy to forward a design brief to any potential developers. Part of our web development costs will be grant funded so we can only work with an Irish developer.

Thanks all for your help. In the meantime, please follow us on Facebook [url:3cfcmm9p]https://www.facebook.com/BlackDonkeyBeer[/url:3cfcmm9p] and Twitter [url:3cfcmm9p]https://twitter.com/BlackDonkeyBeer[/url:3cfcmm9p] for news of the brewery's development.

Rich.

Best of luck Rich and Blank Donkey Brewing! I've no idea about web development but if you need anyone to sample your pre release products PM me.

Best of luck with the brewery lads, sadly don't know much on web dev myself, i'm sure there are one or two here who do

And i second what lars said, need anyone to sample, i'll be happy to volunteer!!!

I don't do web development anymore (I'm focused totally on App development now) but I can give you a few pointers:

1. Make sure your developer is a [b:10volegi]developer[/b:10volegi]. A lot of web designers try to pass themselves off as developers. Unfortunately you only find this out when you need your website to do something different and they cannot find a plugin to cover the requirement. Ask to see examples of their PHP, Javascript and MySQL code.

2. Do not hang your sites success on SEO. A lot of site owners have a "if you build it they will come" mentality. I always have to point out that unless someone types their keywords into Google, then their site is not going to appear. Also consider traditional methods of advertising your site.

3. Do not get a site built from scratch. Use a CMS system like WordPress (at the light end), Drupal or Joomla. This will allow you to take control of your content and not have to pay a third party every time you need to add some more text or upload extra images.

Don't underestimate the importance of social media! If you have a Twitter account make sure you use it to engage with customers, don't just RT positive comments about yourself!

Thanks for the tips guys.

One question Andrew, if I'm going to use a CMS system, like a Wordpress template for example, do I even need a developer? It seems to me it would be a whole lot cheaper to just buy a template and populate it myself.

Thanks again, Rich.