Essential Keystrokes Throws a Gift Giving Blog Birthday Bash

Lately, there has been a rash of blogging birthdays as bloggers pass their first, second, or third year of blogging. But the one year birthday of this blog has become a major celebration for the blogger as well as her readers: Essential Keystrokes Birthday Bash Week Prizes. Like I said Friday, I have a habit […]

JPG, PNG, or GIF – When and How to Use Different Web Graphic Formats

While it isn’t pretty and a bit rude, this tutorial on when and how to use internet image formats via email or web page is helpful for learning about which image or graphic format to choose. For a basic understanding, and visual examples, of the differences between GIF, JPEG, and PNG, it does the job. […]

Give the Gift of Love to WordPress

If you are using WordPress, WordPress.com, and/or are a fan of WordPress, consider giving the gift of love to WordPress this year. It’s never to late to help support the development of WordPress, one of the most popular and fastest growing blogging tools around. You can help in four ways. All except one are very […]

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 Exercise: When Was the Last Time You Got Personal

I walked into a friend’s home and found the fridge covered with refrigerator art from her seven year old. The traditional home often features such childhood artwork but this was extremely precious as the child has learning disabilities and drawing. The artwork was beautiful. I stood there transfixed at the crude scribbles, trying to find […]

Blog Exercises: Are You Setting an Example for Others?

A milestone in personal rights seemed to have been achieved recently when US basketball player, Jason Collins declared publicly he was gay, hopefully setting an example for others that it is now “safe” to come out of the closet. The news in and around his announcement has me thinking about heroes, mentors, and risk-takers, those […]

Blog Exercises: Spell Checkup on Categories and Tags

Oh no! I was writing out a tag in WordPress and the auto-suggest feature popped up with a misspelled tag name! Yikes! Today’s blog exercise is to clean up your tag and category names to ensure you’ve not made the same mistakes. To review your category names in WordPress, go to Posts > Categories and […]

Blog Exercises: Blog Work Flows

In “A Sample Blogging Workflow” by my friend, Chris Brogan, he talks about the process of blogging with consistency and determination in mind. Your company has decided to launch a blog, and you’re the lucky blogger. Maybe you’ve even asked for this pleasure, suggested it to the boss yourself. Only now, you have to deliver, […]

Blog Exercises: Awesome by Association

In “Two WordPress.com Experts and One Series of Blog Work,” Kinna Reads featured myself and my friend, timethief of one cool site (lowercase intentional). I’m honored and grateful, but more importantly, I’m awesome by association. My friend, timethief, started blogging in 2005. When she switched to WordPress.com, her life changed as did mine and hundreds […]

Blog Exercises: Become Your Own Fan Blogger

Fan blogging is one of the most challenging types of blogging. Fan blogging is blogging about a celebrity, television show, movie, sports team, sports player, criminals, or other groupie subject. Today’s blog exercise examines the art of fan blogging and how to learn from fan blogging to create your own fan club around your blog. […]

Blog Exercises: June Monthly Random Edit Day

Today it is 6 posts to edit on our monthly Random Editing Day. It’s June. It’s summer in most of the world, some switching from winter to summer while others are switching from summer to winter. It’s a time of change. This month’s random editing day let’s focus on the word “change.” Run a search […]

Blog Exercises: Battling the Blue Funk

My mother just sent an email saying she was in a funk. Ten minutes later I got a phone call from a friend asking to visit to help her get over the “winter funk – summer blues” – her words. I just got over my blue funk a couple weeks ago. Funks are mini-depressions, short […]

Help Spread the Word – Writing for the Web Class

There is still room available in my Writing for the Web course at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. This professional development course runs from June 11 – 27, 2013 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9AM – Noon. The class size is limited so there […]

Blog Exercises: I Thought You Would Appreciate This Gratuitous Picture

For many years it was thought that every post published on a blog had to feature a gratuitous image, some photograph that would lure people to click through and read the article. The myth perpetuated itself, which myths tend to do, and many still publish content with gratuitous imagery. A gratuitous image is one that […]

Blog Exercises: Under the Hood Spring Cleaning

One of my students in my Portland Community College WordPress class reminded me that clutter is clutter, no matter where you find it. Peter Smith reminds us that too many WordPress Themes is a waste of resources. Today, I feature his post to remind us all to clean up our sites under the hood. I […]