Benjamin Shepherd Classical Pianist: Update No. 1 issued 15 June 2005

- official web site -
www.benjaminshepherd.com

Issued 15 June 2005

Welcome to our first Update!
These bulletins are intended to keep you up to speed with current and future technical developments at the site,
as well as letting you know when significant new material has been added, so that your return visits are worthwhile.
We hope you enjoy following Benjamin's career over the coming years and we thank you for your interest.

- The Shepherd Media Management Team -

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SEARCH ENGINE SUCCESS!

It can be difficult making sure a web site finds its way to the top of the search engines' results lists -
but we've already had considerable success with some of the Internet's biggest names such as Yahoo!,
Alta Vista, Excite, WebCrawler and AllTheWeb!

Yahoo search Alta Vista search

Search For A Star

Search for Benjamin Shepherd at these sites and you'll find he's top of the list at Yahoo!
(out of "about 998,000" results!), he's No. 1 at Alta Vista,
he's listed 13th & 14th at Excite, 23rd & 26th at WebCrawler
and Nos. 1 & 2 at AllTheWeb!

AllTheWeb search

Top Two!

You'll notice some of the results show the web site address as benshepherd.com rather than benjaminshepherd.com -
that's because we registered benshepherd.com as a web site address some months ago and many search engines have now "spidered"
(automatically located and listed) that address, but we've now decided to use benjaminshepherd.com as the long-term official web address.
Visitors to benshepherd.com are automatically redirected to the pages held here at benjaminshepherd.com in a simple, smooth operation.
In time, the search engines will spider the newer address and will (hopefully!) list it at the top of their search results.

Other keywords (hidden in the Main Page's HTML code) used to attract the search engines' attention to the site include:
pianist, pianists, piano, classical piano, classical pianist, classical pianists, concert, concert pianist, concert pianists, concert piano
These keywords should eventually help to lift this site to somewhere near the top of a search if Benjamin's name is not included -
but so far, we're not having much success on that front (competition is immensely fierce out there!), which is why we hope you'll help to
spread the word about Benjamin's site by telling your family and friends about it!

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SOUND & VISION

We'll be adding more photographs and audio and video clips to the site as soon as we can.

As you can probably appreciate, so much of Benjamin's time at the moment has been taken up with his studies -
and preparations for his year in Slovakia, which begins in September - that there's not been much time left for
recording! However, we hope to capture his July recital (see the Schedule page for full details) on video,
and release it as an exclusive DVD that will be offered for sale here at the site and at Benjamin's future appearances.
Proceeds from the July recital and the resulting DVD will help support Benjamin's year of study in Slovakia.

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COUNTING ON YOU

There's a little counter at the bottom of the Main Page which gives an indication of the number of visitors
this site receives. This is a free service currently provided by GoStats.com. It registers the number
of unique visitors to the Main Page - that is to say, it does not count two sequential hits from the
same IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is an identifying number allocated to you by your ISP (Internet Service
Provider) each time you use them to connect your computer to the Internet. It's called a dynamic IP address
(as opposed to a static IP address) because it changes each time you dial up.

What this all means is that when you visit the Main Page for the first time, the counter increases by one digit. As you navigate around the site
during that visit, the counter will not register any further return visits you may make to the Main Page. If you navigate right away from this site,
go to another for a while and then return to this site's Main Page, it still won't register - providing your Internet connection, and
therefore your IP address, has remained the same. If you disconnect from the Internet and then dial up again, you'll be allocated a different IP
address by your ISP, and if you then come to this site's Main Page, your visit will be registered and the counter will increase by one digit.
Broadband users who allow their computers to stay connected to the Internet 24/7 can stay away from this site for several days and,
providing their broadband connection hasn't failed or been manually disconnected during that time, their next visit still won't register.

This provides a more accurate assessment of unique visitor numbers than simply counting every single time the Main Page is accessed.
GoStats.com also provide some basic statistics in graph form for the web site administrator to help with monitoring the site's popularity.

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Until Next Time

That's it for this inaugural Update Bulletin.
Thanks for taking the time to read it and we hope you've found it informative and interesting.

We'd appreciate reading any comments you may like to make about the site - drop a line to:

We don't intend to bombard you with constant e-mails about Updates, so the next bulletin may not appear for a while -
but in these early days of developing the site, several changes may be made in a relatively short space
of time, and we hope you'll want to know about them as soon as possible!

To be notified by e-mail whenever a new Update Bulletin is issued, write to us at this address:

Should you ever need to unsubscribe from the Update Bulletin notification service,
simpy send an e-mail to this address indicating that you wish to unsubscribe:

Best wishes,
- The Shepherd Media Management Team -
Christine Shepherd - bookings
Mike Shepherd - transport
Sheridan Farrow - video
Bob Kingsley - web