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One
of the broadest and most creative sites is gay-ireland.com From
personals to features, from television to basic information,
gay-ireland.com has all the bases covered.
The
origin of the site is very much a personal story. Its creator, Vin
Donnelly, says: “I was on-line on day and accidentally came across a
community chat channel called #gay-ireland. I found it a great help when
I was coming out. There were a lot of genuine people on it that helped
me..
From
that I started my own site as there was very little information on gay
life in Ireland on the net. I know when I was coming out a site such as
gay-ireland.com would have been very useful. At that time, I was very
nervous about my sexuality and found it difficult to go into a shop and
pick up a gay newspaper.”
Since
he first started the site in 1997, the response has been overwhelmingly
positive. Vin says: “The feedback has been very positive, originally
our e-mail discussion list had 15 members. Now it has 400 members, as
well as people who come and go. We average about 13,000 hits a month”
He is aware that addressing the many needs of such a diverse community
is the key to its success. He says: “I try to have as much information
on the site as possible, but I also try to make it as interesting as
possible. Its all very well and good having advice and safer sex
information, but a lot of people want to have fun and enjoy themselves.
So with that in mind, I added a mix of entertainment news with serious
information. There are plenty of Irish entertainment websites out there
but few of them cater for the gay community”.
Constantly
expanding and looking for new contributors, gay-ireland.com is an
undoubted success story.
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