The 2002 census listed there as being 612 towns in ireland

A quick search lists 859 towns ...

How much research have you done into this

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Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )
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Just to prove it to some degree ...

Yes I'm aware I have no life

Thats alot of towns. but strange thing is cloghan is a town. Banagher is on the list and its beside cloghan and no bigger but cloghan is not listed. So there prob more town missing from that list.................

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web design ireland | Banagher | building contractors | Tullamore B & B

It was a quick list pulled together ... so doubtless missing lots

There are 100 towns in ireland with a population of 3200 or more apparantly (dublin / galway and so on are included in that list)

I have looked at the cencus information my aim is to enter all towns with a population of >5000 (I mention this in my About Us page)

Forbairt: In your list you have got places like Ballyporeen, I am from there and it has got just a couple of hundred people. For that reason I plan to include nearby villages and smaller towns as being within the catchment area of a larger town. (For example, Ballyporeen will be included in mytown.ie - Mitchelstown)

I realize that I am missing a massive proportion of the population of by leaving out Dublin. As I mentioned earlier I plan to include Dublin suburbs very soon eg. Christchurch, Rathmines, etc.

I am not trying to make excuses here but I am a one-man-band and the site is (and I guess always will be) a work-in-progress. But please keep the ideas and criticism coming it will help me to improve the site.

Only about 80 of those .. should it should be quick enough to add them in.
I understand where you are coming from ... I'd just guess it could be the kinda thing that would catch on with smaller places ... once you hit 5k people you probably have a village council of elders (the local pub) ... and you've probably got a bit of a budget for their local area website. which makes your idea ... a bit ... redundant .. unless there is some other reason to be listed. And I guess as a link directory of sorts you'll get people putting in their businesses and so on.

I do understand how it can be ... I guess I'd just make the bigger areas a priority in your initial days (and I do realise I'm contradicting myself with what I've said above about bigger places having a bit more of a budget for their own town) ... I guess what I'm trying to say is don't rule any place out ... at least not the top couple of hundred towns.

But as you've said you'll be including them in the region ...

Maybe a way of going about it is to include the towns ... and say ... this town is included in this towns environs

(ranting a bit sorry ... coffee / red bull bad )

I live in Miltown Malbay for the Summer Months and even with the summer migrants it hardley comes up to 1500
you could knock these off your list
Miltown Malbay population 700
Spanish Point 100
Quilty 200

I hadn't originally read your about section ...
I guess in a way I wonder why they have to be catchment-areas and not full areas ? They could be listed as a sub town or sub area of the main town.

Again ... personally I wouldn't rule out any place from direct inclusion ...

quilty.mytown.ie may have a lot of appeal for people from quilty .. even if there are only 200 people there. But ah well ... still just my thoughts ... I guess I just see inclusion as dumping in a big table of the towns into a database and letting people pick which one they want

I can see both sides of the debate for the inclusion of both smaller towns/villages and Cities.

For smaller places my main concers would be:

1. Not having content. People do not like going to a page with nothing on it, and if they went to look for restaurants, hotels etc in Ballyporeen they would find nothing as they don't exist in the town.
2. My resources. As I mentioned I am a one-man-band so my time is already stretched. If the site becomes successful and I retrieve some of my investment from it I can look at expanding it.
3. If a town only has a couple of hundred people, it is most likely rural and the percentage of those people using the internet would be much less than that of a larger town (I think?).

For larger cities my main concenrs are:

1. Same as point 2 above - resources/cost
2. Competition - most cities have a directory type website that local businesses may already be paying subscription fees to appear on. I am not sure if they would be willing to pay to appear on another site.

I am not saying that I will not be including Cities and larger ciities on the mytown.ie, when I have time and resouces I will definitely look into it.
I think the idea of moving in to the cities is definitely one I should act on as the audiece warrants the investment.

Thanks again for all this feedback, and keep it coming!

I guess where I'm coming from as well is from a marketing point of view ... it makes more sense to target the bigger places as well ... you target them .. larger BB penetration ... more likely to make use of the service ... the system starts to build up gets some advertisers ... more and more users .. and hey presto you've got people saying .. you should do this for your town of BallySmallMuck ..

Not sure if you're targeting adverts as well by town ? ... you'll need some people advertising for it to start to look attractive for others to advertise there.

Site + Users + Traffic = People interested in advertising ...

No matter how good the idea ... if you don't have the traffic you won't get the advertising .. won't be able to devote more time to the project and won't be able to build upon it