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A year away from the Hurly Burly of Internet an a couple of months back in and it is a can of worms.

So I am testing some old ideas of “popularity”, for example This is a link to a search engine which is listing our apartments and BandB in France – if dear Mr Google sees this page – then he may follow that link and he may think it is an important site and give it a big kiss.

Or he/she may think I am a horrid trickster an cast me forever into oblivion.

Ah… the slings and arrows….

Alexandra, my daughter, helps me a lot with translations. I am impressed with the letters she has composed for me. However she has a secret weapon there is a website www.Conso.net which gives help and one of their services is a set of standard letter templates for all manner of things.

Interestingly I also picked up a reference to this site on my Facebook pages today and found links to this site posted on other blogs and websites.

I went to Bristol in the UK for a few hours last week to meet a publisher who is developing a network of websites.

Beziers airport is only twenty minutes from our home at VillaRoquetteand with Ryanair, if you select tour dates, you can fly to the UK and back for less than the price of two cups of coffee, including all charges and stuff.

I have been interested in Internet publishing since I started making websites twelve years ago – I tried to build my own services with names like Goto-France, Wotspot, a publishing idea called Chez Frog, the French Property Digest and a raft of others – it is a huge amount of work and with the techical problems of secure hosting, keeping the hackers out etc all these have slipped quietly away.

I have also met and talked to other publishers looking at a local operation, the best for information is an excellent group of sites based around AngloInfo – their local site is operated by Caroline and from one operation in place when I first met them, they now have many franchisees around the world. Their style is to give local information and keep a discussion forums which attract advertising. Anglo Info has a good directory about local laws, services and regulations and is a big help to ex-pats where English is their first language.

Perhaps I should have considered their Languedoc franchise, but their style is not mine, and I do not like the word ‘Anglo’.

Other information sites in France include French Entree and locally there are several good information sites for Languedoc including Creme de Languedoc , The Languedoc Page , Languedoc France , Herault Whats On , BlaBlaBlah and Languedoc Sun – so is there a market for a new site called Guide2Languedoc?

All these sites survive on advertising and, although Languedoc has the biggest concentration of English speaking ex-pats in France and is now the most visited region in France, is it a good time to bring another online service focused on this region to scratch for the advertising euros?

Taking on this project is a huge amount of work – the rental accommodation in our home, Villa Roquette, is (nearly) finished so I will have time.

What attracts me about the Guide2 websites is the plans they have to make their service a community and to give good relevant news and information.

I would welcome any comment and ideas from readers, your opinion is valuable to me and I hope to hear from you.

Now that I have stopped working (well almost) on the house, I am back to marketing and getting guests for our apartments and BandB. We first started this in our old home in Nizas 12 years ago and did all our marketing through the Internet – hopefully I can get back into the same flow as before, there is a lot more actiity on the internet now and the days of getting to the top of Alta Vista in a couple of hours are long gone – the tricks I used then would get me banned from Google for life. I am looking at what is on offer for help in Internet marketing, the rules and ruses seem top be the same, just follow the Google motto of ‘Do No Evil’ – a good website I found is http://www.nikkipilkington.com/about-us/ – Nikki looks good too! (plus she’s a biker)

Hopefully my 20 years experience of Internet marketing will get me started, but I will always look for good skills and help. I don’t have the strong websites I used to own, which got to the top of all French accommodation listings, but I will – Start All Over Again –

If you are thinking of coming to France – stay with us – I will try to make you an offer you cannot refuse.

Villa Roquette

Would you like your own home in the South of France? It is a dream shared by most of the visitors I meet here and, after a quiet year with most of the world (according to the Daily Mail) hopping from one crisis to another, people are beginning to look for bargains for sale – there are a few still around.

For a while I was selling property in France, I worked with an excellent company which I thoroughly recommend if you are looking along the Riviera. However, I found the local agencies are, generally, a bunch of thieving rascals – there are a couple I would recommend in Languedoc, so if you are looking here then do contact me first. I am happy to give advice, but I cannot charge and get no commission as I am not registered as an agent now. You get my personal opinion from 20 years of experience, preferably over a glass of wine

Most visitors fall in love with old beams and stone houses – many of these homes in this region were built over three hundred years ago – our first home here was first recorded in the 10th century – and has been lived in continuously for over 1,000 years – our present home is a mixture of 17th and 19th century, so is very modern in comparison.

But old houses, although built to last with stone walls sometimes two yards thick, need a lot of work if you need to renovate – I know, I have spent a lot of the last fifteen years with a hammer, shovel and pick.

One very sweet house I sold a couple of years ago is back on the market – here are some photos, it (very rare) comes with a courtyard garden and a fig tree. It need a lot of work, but is not too big and a realistic project. The village is just perfect, a classic Mediterranean village in one of the most beautiful parts of France. Contact me and I will put you directly in touch with the owner, a charming American lady who rides a Ducati (very fast). The price, I understand, is around 50,000 euro.

Carole and I are back into the maze of French paperwork to get our gites and chambre d’hotes registered as a business – a new system, Auto Entrepeneur, now exists and we found an excellent site run by a charming lady which helps you get a business sorted in France, aptly called http://www.startbusinessinfrance.com/ – as an added bonus her husband has a business selling curries by mail – we bought some and they are divine

I discovered that that the Via Domitia starts at Pertuis , and will always definitely finish at eight o’clock – with a French lecturer.

I remember a 1950s TV show by the “Goons” called “Son of Fred”, I think there was one also called “Fred” – it was the early days of advertising in the UK so the piss was taken out of goons programms by Milligan, Secombe, Bentine and Sellers – my favorite advert was for “Footo” the wonder boot exploder, where a boot was blown up. This blog entry is being added by “Blogo” – I just hope my blog does not now blow up.