A few days ago i installed google analytics on theleavingcert.com as i noticed it had gone to no.1 in google for ‘the leaving cert’ – a fairly competitive niche here in Ireland.
The site itself is pretty old and cluttered with no real fresh or dynamic image about it. I want to change that. I’m starting to do my homework now on this niche and it’s important i get it back on track as it does have major potential.
By pure coincidence i actually received an informal offer today for it of $300+ which is tempting, but i’d made my mind up a few days ago to hang on to it and grow it myself. It is currently my longest serving site along with this blog. It now has over 300 members and appears to be getting about 70 uniques/day plus loads of on site time – so people are really using this site and looking at the content – which is to be expected i suppose as these guys are highly motivated and want to learn, therefore they’re open to new material and help.
It has a strong, solid domain name – theleavingcert.com – looking back, that was a gem of a purchase at the time 
Although SEO is very strong at the minute, it’s using joomla and although i do know my way around joomla, i’m much stronger with wordpress and i believe wordpress has got to the stage where it can now match all the features i currently have installed on joomla.
Fresh content is what it needs to keep things ticking over and with joomla, it’s just too darn hard and complicated to do it… with wordpress i add content daily to several blogs, so it’s second nature to me. I can also kick the SEO up a notch if i’m using wordpress 😈
So this is one site which is not for sale, certainly at the minute. I’m gonna really try and have a stab at revamping it next week, when i’m off. Monetizing it will be tough but i’m quite happy to run it for nothing and just build up content and members. That’s after all where the real value is.
I’m currently testing out a wordpress theme on an unused site i have and seeing if i can import users & content through a database. If that fails, i may just copy/paste content as there’s not actually that much to copy. Somehow converting the joomla forum in to a wordpress forum though – that’s gonna be tricky
I’ve got a Joomla book sitting on my desk.. about to dive in and learn it but im also looking around to see if i should learn wordpress first/too. Looks like knowing both is not a bad idea. Currently all my blogs/sites are built using typepad and hand coded .html with komposer.
Anyway, I’m not Irish but I do like your sites and the info your putting out.
I converted one of our sites from Mambo (the predecessor to Joomla) a couple of years ago and it was no big problem. I’m a lot happier with WordPress, as it’s a lot easier for the less experienced end user to deal with.
Check out zulunotes.com – a wiki for the Irish Leaving Cert.. Set up in April 2007 judging by the whois… Looks like a decent effort.
Alan