Shawn Blanc from Fighting to Stay Awake had got his ‘quick tip’ submitted on Problogger.net today. It’s a simple tip that I used to do in my first few months of blogging -

When someone comments on your site for the first time, send them a thank-you email

Mailing your first time commenters really helps in building a loyal readership. Your readers will feel noticed and this can encourage them to come back to your blog and comment frequently.

Though this tip can be easy to apply on new blogs with few commenters, it will be hard to do so on blogs that get a lot of comments.

What do you say? Have you tried mailing your first time commenters with a ‘Thank you’? Did it help?

My favorite Firefox theme, Macfox, has been updated and is now compatible with Firefox 2.0. There is also a Graphite version of Macfox available for download here.

macfox II continues offering the clean look of Mac OS X Firefox for your PC – includes Aqua-style UI elements and enhancements. Clean, professional and elegant. Redesigned from the ground up on the Firefox 2.* framework, macfox II preserves the new features found in the browser.

Download Macfox Firefox Theme

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On a 3 Column Theme, what’s your preference for Sidebars? Would you like them on both sides or together? Please vote and let me know the reason.

It’s just something I want to know before I complete my new design

Note: This Poll will close on November 19

Utom has released some free Icons of Web 2.0 logos like Del.ico.us, YouTube, FeedBurner, Technorati, Flickr and an RSS icon. The icons look like candy to me

You can download them in both PNG and ICO format from here.

Found via MaxPower

Check this strange AdSense Ad. They have larger font size, different font, bulleted list and no background color for the Ad. They have not even put a visible border between the Ad and image.

Or do those bullets qualify as a division between ad and image?

Do you think they are a Premium Publisher? Or are they just violating the AdSense TOS?

Found via Digital Point Forums

When Microsoft released IE 7, I thought that all my IE problems would be over, but I was wrong. It just doubled…now I have to check my designs both in IE 6 and 7 as I have 30.63% of my traffic using IE 6 and 10.69% using IE 7.

After I designed my new theme, readers reported it to be completely messed up in IE 6 which I had not noticed as I had upgraded to IE 7. What do I do now?

Should I remove IE 7 and install IE 6? But I will have to check my design on IE 7 too as it may cause problems that IE 6 does not

I am very confused. What should I do?

One reason why some bloggers stick with partial feeds is the fear that their readers will stop visiting their blogs and start reading their content through Feed Readers. Well, there are some ways to get your RSS readers to visit your blog.

Like for example, when I had announced about my new blog design, I experienced a slight increase in traffic on that day. It might have been my RSS readers who visited my blog after they read about the new design on their Feed Reader.

Continue reading ‘How to Get Your RSS Readers to Visit Your Blog’

Because my cat asked me to stop posting

For the past few days I have been getting funny PMs from a few people on my Yahoo! Messenger Buddy List. These are some of the messages that I got.

Breaking news : school girls are kidnapped by the terrorists !! hxxp://mytermex.com/?news_id=18388

damn, she is so cute hxxp://nsl-school.org?id=miss_world

you are virus infected . Use this tool to remove viruses from your PC : hxxp://mytermex.com/?id=virus_shield

oh my god , i’ve won a 20000 usd lottery :O hxxp://nsl-school.org/?id=winning_list . Come to my house tonight for a party !!

Luckily I was aware about this virus as I had earlier read about it on Digital Point Forum.

After you get infected by the virus, it will try to kill your AntiVirus and will instantly send a PM to all your IM buddy friends. The virus does not affect Firefox and Opera, but IE users are going to have a tough time with it.

Have you come across this IM Virus? If yes, how did you get rid of it?