Bold Intention

Back in 2009 I started this blog as a bit of fun, just somewhere to pick up on website development again after a few years absence. A bit of a hobby really, where I could learn a little bit of something along the way and keep the grey cells active. Better than Brain Training any day

Recent history

My first forays initially involved the use of Microsoft FrontPage Express, the free html editor that used to come bundled with Windows, then latterly the commercial version, FrontPage 2000, but as a blogging platform goes, I personally think you have to go a long to beat WordPress. There have been quite a few new things to learn regards using the WordPress blogging platform itself and its feeds, as well as some old things to re-learn in relation to website security and website promotion, not to mention creating original content on a (fairly) regular basis. Handling all these things alone provides for great variety in tasks to perform, and gives a sense of achievement as we begin to see the effects of our efforts.

Over the last few years, I have basically just written about anything and everything that seemed like it would make for a reasonable posting. Everything from what I had for dinner and where to saving money and energy with our wood burning stove has been the subject of many a blog post on this site when time has permitted. And time, or the availability of spare time has rather been the biggest issue regards getting as many posts published as  would have liked. Not enough hours in the day

Even so, given the existent time restrictions, and therefore reduced number of blog posts resulting, the response has really been quite impressive. From only around 136 posts for the greater part of 2012 the number of visitors arriving at Bold Intention and the number of pages accessed has shown dramatic increase year on year, as can be seen in the table below. These numbers are taken from server tracking rather than Google Analytics, so they do include things like feed hits but excludes search bots.

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Great results

Done quite amazing given the amount of time devoted to the project, and using the forecast function in Open Office Calc, have managed to determine a continued exponential growth rate just by continuing to have the blog online. And if we add more posts, then growth will be even better than forecast.

Haven’t added all that many posts for 2012 at the time of writing but intend to renew and intensity my efforts encouraged by the positive signs showing in the stats above. I reckon that reaching around 250 posts by this time next year may well take the number of page views into the regions of the 750,000 mark, and the number of visitors well in excess of 150,000. That only means adding 2 new posts per week, which isn’t a lot really, but still takes a considerable amount of spare time. Watching those statistics clock up though will be motivation enough to ensure I give it a fair crack. Sure there are more active blog posters out there than I, but still need to give full attention to all other duties.

Growing and developing

Additionally, maybe a more gripping subject for the blog might well entice more repeat visitors and build a great following… as they say, no one cares what I had for dinner, but one thing is for sure. All the content here is original, it’s our perspective of things that we have experienced… can’t get more unique than. Besides, if we all blogged about the same things, there would be no variety making the web a boring place indeed.

Something that does need further development is the cross linking of existing posts, which will make it easier for visitors to find further related content and also increase page views as a result. And as for people getting here in the first place… more links to the site are required, I know, but content creation and functionality have been my priority up until now. As with the number of visitors, links will come in time as other bloggers and I, with similar interests cross paths. Kind of like gardening, nurture and patience is all that’s required

Summary: Growing fun

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