Stop Content Theft Buttons and Badges

During the recent Bitacle Battle of Blogs, the Stopbitacle.org was started and Stop Bitacle buttons showed up on blogs all over the web. Unfortunately, stopping bitacle, a splog that scrapes your blog’s feed content without permission, is just the top of the splog ice berg. To scrape the whole ice berg of content theft, I’ve […]

Would You Groan if Google’s Feeling Lucky Button Was Gone?

Barry Schwartz of SearchEngineWatch recently highlighted an article by The Washington Post on the “Google Feeling Lucky Button”, pointing out that while the button is rarely used, Google executives understand that removal would bring an onslaught of protest. But the company has no plans to evict “I’m Feeling Lucky,” which whisks users directly to the […]

At the Bottom: New Delete Comment Spam Button in Akismet for WordPress.com Users

With the recent high volume of nasty comment spam, most of which is caught by Akismet within WordPress.com blogs, I’ve been mentally chastising the developers for not including a DELETE SPAM button at the bottom of the caught spam list. I would scroll through 90 or more caught spam comments and get to the bottom […]

Customizing Your WordPress Quicktag Buttons

If you have upgraded your WordPress blog, you may have made changes to your quicktag buttons in your previous version and need to know how to add them back. There used to be a few WordPress Plugins you could choose from to allow you to customize or add to your quicktag buttons, the buttons found […]

Adding Post to Spurl Button on Your WordPress Posts

Leslie Russell writes about how to add a Spurl Button to your WordPress posts to help visitors tag your post to Spurl. Bascially, the technique involves using the following – replacing the capital letters with the proper text – and wrapping the link around an Add to Spurl button: <a href=”http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?title=YOUR TITLE &url=http://YOUR.BLOG.COM &blocked=YOUR DESCRIPTION”> […]

Buttons, Bows and Badges for Your Blog

I used to have a sidebar overloaded with a ton of buttons, badges, icons, and bows, linking to feeds, feed readers, site submission services, links, social networking services, translations, and other goodies. Want some buttons and bows, and a few icons and badges associated with blogging and online social social networking? I’ve uncovered a wide […]

Blog Exercises: How Does Your Blog Make You Money?

In an interview with Daniel Scocco of DailyBlogTips, he asked me how long a blogger should wait to monetize their blog. Ha! Forever! I do not think bloggers should monetize their blogs. I think that people who want to get into the business of blogging must make a business plan on how they will use […]

Blog Exercises: Excerpts and Continue Reading

Encountered the front page of a blog where the posts ran on and on and on and on, stretching across the length of the page? Do you ever wish you had more control over the length of your posts on the front page of your site? This Blog Exercise explores the use of the “more” […]

Blog Exercises: Increase Your Thank You Ratio

As a teacher, trainer, social media expert, and advice giver on many blogs, I don’t want to hear your excuses in response to my advice. “Well, if I only had the money…” Really? Since WordPress, the tools I recommend, and the advice I offer is free. What does money have to do with anything I […]

Blog Exercises: How to Add Headings to Your Post Articles

I’ve mentioned using headings in your post articles throughout these Blog Exercises. Let’s look closer at these HTML tags that help you structure and increase the readability of your blog posts. Headings are HTML tags used to set the section or subsection titles within your blog posts. They divide your content into sections, but they […]

Blog Exercises: Speed Blogging with CoLT

I’d like to introduce you to the work horse I use for speed blogging. It’s a web browser add-on for Firefox called CoLT. It stands for Copy Link Text. I will be offering a variety of web browser tips and tools to make blogging faster and easier throughout these Blog Exercises, and of all of […]

Blog Exercises: Feed Readers

Without the feed reader, my blogging life would be seriously hard work. Feed, commonly misidentified as RSS, is the proper name for the contextual version of your site as distributed through various feed types such as RSS, Atom, XML, etc. They are basically your posts stripped of your website design, read like articles in a […]

Blog Exercises: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About

In 2006, I spent three months thrashing, not sleeping at night, agonizing over what I had written and desired to publish. I knew it would be received with resistance at the least, revenge at the worst. I had already tested the waters and found out that the subject could get me in very hot water […]

Happy Anniversary WordPress: The Beginnings

On August 16, 2005, Lorelle on WordPress became blog ID number 72 on the brand new WordPress.com. The first post was appropriately titled “Lorelle on WordPress” to introduce the site. Looking back, it’s amazing how true to form that I’ve kept the mission of this site all these years later as proposed in the first […]

Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging

Did you know there is a Blogger’s Code of Conduct? It’s on Wikipedia. Initiated by Tim O’Reilly, it is as follows: Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments. Consider eliminating anonymous comments. Don’t feed the trolls. Take the […]