2005 July · Dominic Foster

31 Days to Building a Better Blog

July 31, 2005 on 6:01 pm | In Blogging | 7 Comments

I noticed in my RSS reader this morning a post at Pro Blogger that Darren Rowse is going to post 31 tips on how to make your blog better.

This has inspired me to make August 2005 the month that I shall apply tips that I read around the web to direct more traffic to Dominic Foster and my Nicola Darvas websites.

I shall update this site as frequently as possible with applied ideas.

In fact, one of the reasons I have started blogging is that I believe that it is a good way to motivate myself. If I blog that I am going to do something, then I feel more obliged to do it. So, I invite people to add comments with ideas which could extend each of my efforts to direct traffic here - and my failing to carry out my months objectives.

I blogged on Friday that by simply congratulating someone on their new website delivered 30 distinct hosts here. Let’s see what else can be achieved over the next 31 days.

The New New Thing

July 31, 2005 on 1:09 am | In Books | No Comments

Just finished reading The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis. The book tells the story of how Jim Clark led the field in the founding of big money internet business in the 1990’s. Read this book if you want to know about venture capitalists throwing heaps of money at big ideas, massive egos and a huge sailing boat.

It is a remarkable story of Jim Clarks serial entrepreneurship and his aura in Silicon Valley which made people want to work for him and with him (no wonder, since their stock options would set them up for life).

An interesting thing about this book (at least the edition that I read) is that it was published in 1999 and does not document the subsequent bursting of the dot com bubble. I’d like to know how many of Jim Clarks associates got rid of their shares while they were worth a lot.

Joel on Software - Thankyou

July 29, 2005 on 1:53 am | In Blogging | 2 Comments

I’ve been looking at my web server stats and noticed that there were 30 distinct host served today.

Wow, this is an amazing event for me. I got the site up and running on the 4th of July and haven’t had much time to do much with it - not even emailing my friends from my spiffy new ‘dominic at dominicfoster dot com’ email address.

Then I go and make one post on the Joel on Software (JOS) Business of Software forum and then I suddenly get 30 distinct visitors to my web site (well nearly 30… we won’t mention the Googlebot and other crawlers). My post was nothing profound, just congratulating a guy who’s released a piece of software and wanted some opinions about his website.

From my webstats, I can also deduct that about 80% of JOS readers surf the net using Firefox (and why not), 2 JOS readers used my rss feed, 2 JOS readers went and had a look at my fledgling Nicolas Darvas website, and finaly, that JOS readers don’t click on AdSense :-(.

Seriously though, I now feel very inspired to start marketing my websites (I also have plans for some more) and fully joining the blogging comunity.

Finaly, I like to say a big bold thankyou to all my fellow geeks from JOS for visiting my website.

Hmm… I also need to try and find out how to configure the ‘about me’ page in WordPress.

darvastrade.com update

July 26, 2005 on 4:51 pm | In Books | No Comments

I’ve completed my first book review on the Nicolas Darvas website which I am running.

The review is for the book call How I made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market which was written by Darvas himself.

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More WordPress Themes

July 11, 2005 on 2:17 am | In Blogging | No Comments

Well that didn’t last long.

I’m now onto Safety. I’ve started by changing the stylesheet so that the header spans the page. In case anyone is interested, this is done by changing lines 68-72 from:

html>body #header {
margin-left: 226px;
margin-right:226px;
}

to:

html>body #header {
margin-left: 10px;
margin-right:10px;
}

Next I’ll put my adsense back in and then maybe adjust the widths of the sidebars. And then probably move on to changing the colours.

WordPress Themes

July 11, 2005 on 1:56 am | In Blogging | No Comments

Currently having some fun trying out some different themes.

What I’m really after is a three column theme. I’m trying out:

Safety by Josh Lyman
and:
Trident by Frederic de Villamil

I think I’m going to stick with Trident and play with the stylesheet until I come up with something I really like.
For a start, I’m not too keen on the italics.

I’ll keep posting my developments…