John P. at One Mans Blog recently published 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog. You see these kinds of lists all over the place, but I think I should listen to this guy. He's the Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President for Layered Technologies, founder of HTMLHelp.com and former Vice President of Sales for SAVVIS Communications. If he knows enough to present information at WordCamp Dallas, and WordPress people actually listen to him, he must make a whole lot of sense.

I'm not going to repeat what he's written and I'm only going to list the subtopics I need to change and have control over. Here I go:

1. Use English Naming Conventions for Images

   This was something I wasn't paying much attention to until I read this. I named all my images myself, but I never made them descriptive on purpose. After seeing all the searches for "frog clipart" and "money clipart" (images I have on this blog) appearing in my logs, I'm convinced this is the way to go.

2. Use TITLE Elements on Hypertext Links

   Again, I failed to do it on purpose. If you saw titles when you hovered over a link, it was by chance and not intentional. From now on, it'll be intentional. However, with over 1200 pages on this blog, there's no way I'm going to go back and change all the links. Sure, I'll change them when I'm editing a page, but that's about it.

3. Pick the Right Theme

   I hacked the heck out of the theme I'm using for this blog. The original theme code is almost completely gone. What am I saying? Except for some stray strings, it IS all gone. I rewrote and compressed the CSS and I rewrote most of the theme code. I say most because I didn't need to rewrite the functions.

   I won't do it again, though, because someone has already done it for me with other themes. I'm talking about the themes available over at Court's Internet Marketing School. I've started two blogs using two of the themes he'd already gone through and I went through them again, looking for errors or missing functions.

4. Do You Have a Print Stylesheet?

   No. No, I don't. I'll have to investigate this and see what I can do.

5. WP Admin Bar Reloaded Speeds Up Blogging

   I'll get the plugin when it supports WordPress 2.5. Until then, I'll have to do it the hard way.

6. MyBlogLog Makes It Personal

   Maybe, but I was getting spammed by people on it, so I killed my account. Perhaps I'll set a new one up later on.

7. Show Recent and Top Commentators

   I show the top commenters on a separate page, not in the sidebar. I'm thinking of moving it back to the sidebar, but with it "nofollowed" on every page but the index page. I haven't implemented recent commenters yet, but I plan to do it soon.

8. Optimize and Resize Every Image

   I don't use many images, so I should be safe, and I almost always resize them. I'll have to check out the software he recommends.

9. Always Include At Least One Image

   I don't do it on every post and I have no intention of doing it on every post. I'm not a big image fan. Do YOU think I should?

10. Homepage Excerpts Increase Pageviews

    I don't agree with this at all. If you want to read the whole article on the home page, so be it. I get plenty of page views because of my content (7-9 per person average). Why make it any harder for you to read them? You're not clicking my ads, the searchers are. What do YOU think about it?

I reread and checked everything John P. suggested. I already do most of what he wrote, but I completely skipped the "VLogging, PodCasting and Multimedia" section. Because of my limited options here in the Philippines and because I can't keep a connection stable enough to view video from the 900-pound gorilla called "YouTube" without waiting for an hour, trying to get deeper into video authoring is foolhardy at this point.

I'm always amazed at the creative skills of others and that's probably because I don't have an artistic bone in my body. Brian J. Orlowski is an extremely talented individual, specializing in zombie art. With his permission, I present just one of many images available at his website, Drawn of the Dead.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think it's going to take me a while to go through all my feeds and pick out the things I want to write about. After that, I'll probably start searching for specific topics from blogs I may or may not be subscribed to. There's an endless supply of good stuff out there, enough to keep me busy forever.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every website has hotspots. I've spent several hours reading eyetracking studies, heatmap studies, and you name it studies. All of these studies show that websites have certain hotspots in common. I'm not going to link to these studies and let you run off and confuse yourself with a lot of contradictions. I'm going to point out some of the things that are the most important and I'll start with getting visitors to look at your site in the first place.

Read the rest of this entry »

What an awesome blog! SlipperyBrick has a blog design that stands out from most of the blogs that I've looked at in recent weeks. I wish I had that kind of design talent. I sincerely believe the way a blog looks when you first arrive is like the first impression on a blind date. If it looks really good, you'll probably be back for more, regardless of the content.

Content, however, isn't a problem for this blog. There are pictures (or images of some kind) on every article I looked at. If the headlines don't draw you in, the images will. How does "NoPoPo: Urine Powered Batteries" grab you? Or how about "Star Trek photon torpedo coffin to die for"? This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about!

People who are just starting to blog and looking for a way to display advertising without being overly obtrusive could take some pointers from this blog. Even people who are looking to redesign can get a hint or two. Just my casual, unprofessional eye can spot some things that I should have thought about a long time ago.

[Note: As of December 2008 (more than a year later), I still read this blog by email and occasionally visit in person. I like how the author(s) embed humorous tech tips from time to time.]

Do you want a review? Submit your blog on the "Request A Blog Review" page or join the Fair Review Project to get reviews from other people.