RSS Feeds: Blog Review: California 2 Puerto Rico
I'm way behind on blog reviews. I think "California 2 Puerto Rico" is the perfect blog to get my reviews jump-started again.
What is "California 2 Puerto Rico" all about?
Summer Hogan and Stefan Rest moved from California (San Diego, I think) to Rincón, Puerto Rico and have been chronicling their adventures. They've been reteaching themselves how to speak Spanish, although Puerto Rican Spanish is a bit different than the Spanish spoken in California. Puerto Rico is another tropical location, just like here in the Philippines.
Site Design
The overall design is great and I really love that header image. All the navigation items I expect are in place, albeit in the sidebar instead of in the header area. The blog has a few minor problems I think they could iron out if they take the time to do so.
One thing I noticed immediately is that you can access any page with or without the "www." in front of the URL. While Google no longer penalizes blogs for having both, other search engines aren't so forgiving. I recommend any number of plugins to make the URLs redirect to one or the other. I don't have their information handy, but a quick search via Google will return the results. I use a redirection in my .htaccess file.
Some of the pages are slow loading due to all the images. I recommend using thumbnails and a lightbox-type plugin for people who want to see the larger pictures. A caching plugin would also help to speed things up a bit. I use Hyper Cache.
Article Content
Where do I begin? They've written so much about Rincón, Puerto Rico over the past 13-14 months that it wouldn't even be fair for me to try to pick out the best of the best. I'll pick the latest article and be done with it. I don't want to spend too much time looking around — I have a lot of other things that need to get done.
Stefan wrote "Hurricane Bertha Misses Puerto Rico", obviously worried about the hurricane until it left the Puerto Rico area of responsibility. Hurricanes can do a lot of damage in a short period of time, something I've seen here in the Philippines.
My Overall Opinion
If you're interested in Puerto Rico, for vacation or for living, this blog should be of interest. It's being written from an outsider's perspective, naturally, since neither Stefan nor Summer were born or raised there. As a territory of the US, you don't even need a visa to go to and from Puerto Rico.
I try to subscribe to RSS feeds by email for the blogs I enjoy reading and especially if I enjoyed reviewing them. I just did that with this blog.
Would you like a Review?
My reviews aren't great. They're far from it. They're absolutely free, however, and you can't beat that with a stick. Make sure your blog is ready to be reviewed and then submit it on my "Request A Blog Review" page and I'll try to do my best to give you a fair review. The key word is "try".
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The theme looks fresh and not like the usual canned stuff you find on most blogs.
By the way, what do you think of my own new theme? (not a request for a full review, but…)
My latest blog post: Boxi and Panjo – Late Night Movie
To be honest, Hari, I didn't notice the change.
It's pretty similar to the earlier one, but the header image has changed, it's a bit narrower and the colour of the background has also changed.
My latest blog post: Boxi and Panjo – Late Night Movie
I used to go to Pr as a kid a lot and I loved it, really cool place, great hotels and food.
I like their content…keeps me interested. Sounds like a fun adventure!
I really like the graphics and content. Thanks for the heads up!
wow! very impressive! I really like the content. Thank you so much.
Cali to P.R.Same diff…I would think it would be more intersting to go from Michigan to P.R.
California and Puerto Rico weather is completely different, so it's not the same difference. The similarity ends at having a coastline.
cool blog…can't wait to read the updates.
This looks like a good find – I think I'd like to visit Puerto Rico sometime – that might be a good place to practice my Spanish. You're right though that the Spanish language of Puerto Rico can be quite different…. there is more variation among spoken Spanish than spoken English I think.
My latest blog post: Rolling the R