Thank you all for your support during yesterday's launch of the "Purely Because" blog.

Here are the headline achievements:

1. Configured DNS, set up hosting and installed basic WordPress blog through Fantastico.
2. Uploaded and configured Semiologic theme including layout, header and sidebar widgets.
3. Made five blog posts throughout the day to give you something to read and the spiders something to crawl.
4. Submitted one blog post to Digg.com (probably what attracted the spiders)
5. Configured the "Ad Spaces" plug-in to automatically display AdSense blocks and Auction Ads.
6. Configured the "Reading Now" sidebar widget to promote books through Amazon.com
7. Recorded 99 unique visitors to the blog during the first day.
8. Received messages of support from several people and estimate that over $50 was donated.
9. The stats show that the site was crawled by Googlebot three times.
10. Ten people downloaded Andrew Fox's Free Guru Slayer report.

Having spent a total of 4.5 hours on the site during the day, I think that those results are a very good start. If we can keep up the momentum, it should be possible to raise $5.000 for the Children With Heart Disease within 100 days.

Thanks!

John