This is the second blog that I'm reviewing for Rome Uy, the first being "For Newbies Trying to Make Money Online" back in December of 2007.

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Although this is a commercial website that I wouldn't normally review without a fee (money or otherwise), I decided to do it because Thomas asked nicely for objective opinions.

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The Kentucky Derby is not only a sports event, it's big business. It involves horses, jockeys, trainers, owners, television networks, Internet websites and videos, gamblers and consumers. The latest race occurred on May 3, 2008. Stay tuned until the end and I'll tell you why I'm writing about this. If you don't care for the sport, feel free to skip straight to the end.

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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.

This post is directed at people younger than I, many much younger. I'm only going to list things that I lived without at some time during my 46 years of age and I'm only going to list those things that I can remember. If they're already obsolete, I won't bother to list them. Here we go and in no particular order:

• Television remote control
• Cordless telephone
• Cell phone
• Microwave oven
• Automatic drip coffee
• DVD player
• Computer
• Internet
• Color television
• Video game console
• Frost-free refrigerator
• Cable television
• Satellite radio
• Automatic washing machine
• Automatic clothes dryer
• PDA
• Mp3 player
• Camcorder
• Digital Camera
• Printer
• Copier
• Scanner
• Blender
• Electric Mixer
• Rice Cooker
• Refrigerated water dispenser
• CD player

I could go on, but I won't. Many of these things existed while I was young but were not affordable to the average family. If you're young, you probably can't imagine what life would be like without all of these advances. In my opinion, life was simpler and more fun.

Edit: Are there any items on the list that I failed to mention and you would like to elaborate on? Feel free to add them to the comments. The base date I used was the year of my birth, 1960. Anything prior is digging too far back.