We have been reviewing our visitor stats for the Virtual Swanage website for the first four months of 2012 compared to 2011. The stats show an increase in the accommodation, events, local directory and the Buy and Sell sections but a decrease in the Gallery and the blog.

 From these stats it seems that more people are looking for accommodation for the current year and are looking for events to visit while on their holidays and also local business, clubs and organisations. The gallery hasn't had as many updates this year as we had planned due to other work commitments and weather conditions and this also results in a lack of new blog posts notifying of new additions to the site.

We ask all the business owners who are listed with us to let us know if you allow Dogs and other pets in your businesses. We would like to complile a list of pet friendly businesses to add to the website.

Our family welcomes yours to join us at Easter, from little Silvestre in Europe’s only orang-utan crèche to our family groups of woolly monkeys and golden-cheeked gibbons!

If you’re looking for some eggcitement this Easter, Monkey World – Ape Rescue Centre in Wareham is the place to be!  Once again this Easter weekend there’s a tasty treat for children visiting Monkey World as from Good Friday (6 April) until Easter Monday (9 April) the first 100 children to enter the park each day will receive a FREE chocolate Easter egg!

Home to over 240 rescued and endangered primates of 17 different species, Monkey World is a fun and fascinating day out for the whole family. Daily keeper talks provide interesting information about the parks residents, many of whom have been neglected or cruelly treated in the past.  There’s also plenty of opportunity for the kids to ‘monkey around’ in the Great Ape Play area – the largest in the south – or a soft play area in the Treetops Café for younger ones.

With a range of food options and picnic spots available, plus a well stocked gift shop, Monkey World is the perfect Easter holiday day out and there’s no better time to visit as the Rescue Centre celebrates it’s 25th Anniversary this year! The park officially opened on 14th July 1987, and on the same date this year Monkey World is hosting a spectacular ‘Party In The Park’! Tickets for this evening event are now on sale and more details are available at www.monkeyworld.org.

There’s no better time to come and celebrate Monkey World’s achievements throughout the past quarter of a century, so enjoy a fascinating family day out this Easter and come early to make sure your child is one of the lucky 100 children collecting an eggciting chocolate treat!

Overview of Visitors

Top Pages:

Search Engines

We have had an increasing problem over the past few months with our advertisers not updating their contact details when they change their email addresses and this is resulting in enquiries from your customers not reaching the correct destination.

We urge all our advertisers to check their details are correct and update them if necessary.

A comment sent in today about the Return on investment (ROI)  when advertising online yet again proved that you need good quality photographs of your property if you are going to gain customers either online or with offline advertising.

The saying "A picture paints a thousand words" is very true when advertising holiday accommodation. Having poor quality, badly lit, poor angle, cluttered or blurred photographs will make your holiday accommodation look poor compared to businesses with good quality, well lit and in focus photographs.

Some interior photography tips:

1. Use a tripod, this will eliminate any camera shake which results in blurred photos.

2. Turn on the lights in the room, this helps to light any dark corners.

3. Don’t shoot direct into the windows as this will cause your camera to underexpose the rest of the room resulting in a dark room with little detail and very bright windows.

4. Use a flash on your camera, bounce the flash off a flat surface such as walls or the ceiling which helps to give a more even light throughout the room.

5. Style your rooms, include items such as towels, soap, coffee cups etc in the rooms which are normally supplied for your guests. Don’t overdo this as too much clutter will be distracting in the final shot.

6. Take your photos using a wide angle lens and shoot from corners rather than from side to side. Move any furniture to enable you to get as much of the room in the photo as possible.

This website http://www.strobist.blogspot.co.uk  has a lot of useful information for photography using on and off camera flashes and some posts on shooting indoor rooms

Due to the current block from Hotmail for our mailing lists, we are moving our mailing list services to a third party system which will allow many more options for our weekly updates.

You can subscribe to the new mailing list on http://eepurl.com/jZP1X 

For the past week the service providers who run Hotmail, live.com and MSN email accounts have blacklisted our Virtual Swanage email server from sending any messages to people who use email accounts supplied by the above. This means that if you use a @hotmail.com or @hotmail.co.uk or @live.com or .co.uk or msn email account you will not be able to receive emails from our website.

We have been in contact with the service providers of these email services and they claim that our websites have been sending emails to people who haven’t asked for them. Our mailing list system is subscription only and we do not send out messages to random addresses as they have suggested.

They refuse to tell us which emails they have received and to which address so we cannot check to see if the recipients are valid subscribers who have reported our website for sending spam emails.

Today we setup a new email server on a different server from the one which is currently blacklisted and then found that this server was also blacklisted despite the server not having an email server installed until today and it hadn’t sent any emails when we found it was already blocked.

This leads us to believe that the blacklist is much wider than our own servers and maybe affecting many more in the datacentre we use to host our web servers.

Until the service providers for Hotmail, Live.com, MSN etc unblock our email servers we regret that users of these services will not be able to receive our subscription email updates.

If you are one of our valued subscribers and haven’t been receiving your weekly updates we urge you to contact your email provider and ask them why they are blocking the emails you have subscribed to.

If you are one of the many people who have already contacted us regarding this issue, we will post an update on the blog as soon as it is resolved as we are not able to send emails back to you if you use Hotmail, live.com or MSN email accounts.

We have added a new local gym based in the Swanage Bay View Holiday Park to the business listings.

Joe's Gym is a family owned, independent gym with a focus on customer service. Joe and Sarah Shepherd have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the fitness industry.

http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/directory/info.aspx?id=853

New events in April at the Burngate Stone Carving Centre

Situated in the beautiful Isle of Purbeck, Dorset with views over Swanage Bay, Burngate is the perfect location for families to come and enjoy expert tuition on traditional sculpture, letter and stone carving classes, for people of all ages and abilities.

Easter Craft Fair
Friday 6th - Monday 9th April
10.00am-4.30pm

Courses taking place over the weekend:
Family have-a-go stone carving
Saturday 7th - Monday 9th April
2.00pm-4.00pm

Freeform carving
Sunday 8th - Monday 9th April
9.30am-4.30pm

Local art and craft demonstrations will be taking place throughout the day, along with a gallery of sculpture and stone carving. Stone carving courses will be taking place for all the family over the Easter Craft Fair weekend. Refreshments and homemade cakes will also be available.

Family Open Day - New!
Saturday 28th April
9.30am-4.30pm

Free children's art activities
Free stone carving tasters
Free tasters of art and craft courses and demonstrations

Come and join in the fun at Burngate for the very first Family Open Day, new for 2012. With lots of courses for all the family, there is certainly something for everyone. The tea room will be open for visitors to stock up on delicious homemade cakes and cream teas – perfect for a day of crafts and stone carving!

Booking is essential due to limited space. For further details and to book a course please visit www.burngatestonecentre.co.uk or call 01929 439405. You should dress for mess and lots of fun!