Blog Challenge: Describe Your Software – Then and Now

Last week’s blog challenge was Describe Your Computer Setup – Then and Now. This week, I am challenging you to blog about your blog software, then and now. I’ve used just about all types of computer technology, from the early days of data storage on gigantic floppy disks to magnetic cards to “640K is enough […]

Blog Challenge: Describe Your Computer Setup – Then and Now

This week’s blog challenge is to blog about your computer setup as it was “then” in the early days of your computer life, and how it is now, in your modern technology life. What computer tools are you dependent upon for your blog that surround you on your desk? Do you podcast? What do you […]

Blog Challenge: Describe Blogging

I’ve heard a lot of people make jokes about trying to describe blogging to their mother, grandmother, father, and even to co-workers and bosses. Even a best friend’s eyes glaze over when that slogging, logging, grogging, flogging, whatchamacallit – oh, yes, B-L-O-G-Ging thing comes up in conversation. This week, your blogging challenge is to describe […]

Blogging Challenge: Describe Sound

“Diamonds dipped in caramel.” That’s the lovely description of singer Ella Fitzgerald as described in a recent NPR’s All Things Considered program called “Vocal Impressions: Hearing Voices”. Several years ago, I had that last, long, wonderful father-and-daughter time as we went to look at colleges in the Northeast and decide which one had the most […]

Blogging Challenge: Describe Your Blogging Audience

This week’s Blogging Challenge is who is your blogging audience? The saying is: “If you don’t know who you are writing to, how do you know what to write.” It’s true. Unless you understand who you are writing to, how can you figure out what or how to tell them what you want to tell […]

Blog Exercises: May Random Editing Day

May. It’s starting to warm up outside in the north, and growing a bit chilly down under, but it’s that time again. It’s the May Random Editing Day. In this Blog Exercise you will need to edit five random posts from among your thousands – okay, maybe dozens of published articles. What should you look […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

Blog Exercises: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

Blog Exercises: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting. In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in […]

Blog Exercises: The Search for Like Minds

I tat. My 95 year old grandmother-in-law taught me almost 20 years ago. Tatting is 17th century lace making based upon island and coastal women looking for something to do besides fixing fishing nets for the men of the village. They got creative with their netting shuttles to make fine lace doilies, scarfs, edging, table […]

Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reasons For Blogging

We all have our reasons for blogging. Having our say, sharing our experience, teaching, learning, creative outlet, money, reputation, because they told you to…all of these are good reasons to blog, but to keep blogging you need something more. In this blog exercise, I want you to consider the more. It is the answer to […]

The Brute-Force Password Attack on WordPress Sites

My mother emailed me and asked if WordPress was under attack. With all the news of last week’s attack of the Boston Marathon, the attacks on WordPress and other PHP-based web publishing sites was low on the priority list for myself and others, but this is something to take seriously. As we get back to […]

Blog Exercises: April Random Editing Day

It’s the April Random Editing Day in our ongoing series of Blog Exercises. With Spring in the air, flowers and trees blooming, it’s time to flex your editing muscles on four blog posts this month. If you are having trouble finding random posts, think of a keyword that best describes your site or a topic […]

Blog Exercises: Does Your Site Look Spammy?

Does your site look spammy? How would you know whether or not your site looks spammy? It’s time for a spam check. Web design is hard, especially if you aren’t an expert. Yet, in many ways you are an expert if you are a fan of the web. You’ve seen enough sites to know the […]