Why d4d came into existence

The origins for d4d (as I affectionately know it) are kind of obscure, really - in some ways, even I'm not sure of where the name came from. It was one of those weird conversations where about halfway through an idea struck me for a domain name, I checked it, and lo and behold, it was free, so I nabbed it. I'm still waiting for the publishers of the "for dummies" set of books to throw a prime wobbly, but what the hell, they haven't managed it yet, and I'm hardly passing off this as being under their name, am I?

  Once I'd got the domain name, there was about six months of wondering "what the hell do I do with it now I've got it?" I knew it wouldn't really be any good for commercial purposes, so it was more likely to be something personal - but quite what, I had no idea. There were several ideas that came up, and just didn't appeal. I knew the kind of layout I wanted - for me, that side of things was pretty much the easy part. But it's the content that gets people coming in the first place, and it's content that keeps them returning, so the content was the important issue.

  Of course, content is the thing that's still changing too - there's been a couple of sections that have fallen by the wayside because they weren't being read, or were just a pain in the arse to keep going with. The enlarged "about me" section is another example, where I'm expanding it because so many people seem to keep on looking at it. The Christmas section is new (and very seasonal, although the rants will stay there, rather than being archived out for the moment) , and I'm still wondering how the AIDS section will work out. That's part of the fun with this site (well, the fun for me, anyway) - coming up with ideas, keeping on building the site up.

  Initially, the site was going to be more just based on rants, thoughts, and a range of other things - in fact that's how it started out, in June 2002. Then I got more and more into reading some of the personal sites and Blogs, and decided to see whether I could keep up a similar type of thing.

  So, in August 2002 the "random" page got transformed into a template for Blogger, and has been working in that mode since. And the popularity of d4d grows on.

  In June 2003, I got contacted by the charmless bastards at Wileys, the publishers of the "for dummies" books, who decided to try getting snotty and litigious, so destruction-for-dummies mutated into d4d™ and changed over to the current URL of dummies-for-destruction.co.uk. It's been an interesting little struggle, but now we're in the new home, it shouldn't be prone to litigation again. Hey Ho.

Why start something like d4d?

Mainly because I know my main weakness is in starting a project, doing all the initial work, then losing interest and going on to the next project. D4D is something I wanted to do anyway, but also I wanted to see whether I could keep a project going when it was something I was interested in, that kept on throwing up new challenges, and to see if I'd got it in me to keep on developing it.

Why that fucking horrible yellow background?

Because the design is based on the covers for the "For Dummies" set of books. The pointy man (as I nicknamed him) was a direct steal (although the d4d logo we now use is original), and so is the colour scheme. Photoshop grabbed the colour, and I've used it since. It's possible I'll do something about giving it a range of colours at the start of 2003, so that people can "skin" it to the colour they prefer. We'll see.

What else is in the plans for the future?

As with many things, plans change. The HIV section is likely to die soon, and the awards section never really got the interest - I might give it another go at the start of 2004 instead. There's a lot of other stuff coming up with some ideas, so we'll see how things go from there...