Blog Exercises: Polls and Surveys Follow-up

In Blog Exercises: Polls and Surveys I asked you to create a poll on your site asking for input from your readers. Today’s exercise is on creating a follow-up poll. In that exercise, I invited readers to respond to the question, “What publishing platform are you currently using?” The answers to that are typical, skewed […]

7 Blogging Steps Even Veteran Bloggers Forget

Originally published in Blogger and Podcaster Magazine and updated. I write for a variety of online and offline magazines. They’ve graciously permit me to republish my articles. Participating in a recent multiple guest blogger event, I edited and review posts by many top bloggers before publishing. I was rather stunned to find that even veteran […]

PDX WordPress Meetup Group: WordPress Codex Night

The WordPress Meetup Group in Portland, Oregon, has invited me to tonight’s meetup at the US Bancorps Building in downtown PDX to talk about the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, and how to contribute. I’ll show them some basics about the Codex and we’ll spend a couple hours working on maintenance tasks […]

Basic Facts and Resources You Need to Know Now About Web Accessibility

Last night I gave a presentation for an amazing group of web designers and developers in Portland, Oregon. I spoke about web accessibility, a long time passion of mine. My co-presenter was Winslow Parker from the Oregon Commission for the Blind who has been teaching screen reading and computer techniques to the blind. He’s also […]

Blog Bashing: Beware Complacency

In “5 Ways to Rid Complacency From Your Blog” on Daily Blog Tips, Bob Bessette writes about how to mix things up in the new year on your blog: If you’ve owned a blog for a while there’s a good chance that complacency may have already set in. Dictionary.com defines complacency as “a feeling of […]

Summer Blog-b-que for Bloggers

It’s time to celebrate blogging and summer in the Portland, Oregon, area. If you are a blogger, come join the summer Blog-b-que! We’re hosting the first ever Blog-b-que at the home of Lorelle and Brent VanFossen in North Plains, Oregon, on Sunday, August 30, 2009, and you are welcome to join us. We’re inviting WordPress, […]

WordCamp Toronto Raising the Bar This Weekend

Of all the WordCamp events to track, WordCamp Toronto this weekend, May 8-10, 2009, has been one of the most product and prolific. The Schedule is three very packed days of events, speakers, and…everything. Starting at 8AM on Friday and closing Sunday afternoon with an awards ceremony, it’s going to be a packed weekend event […]

WordPress News Report: iPhone, Widgets API, WordCamps in Hong Kong and China, International WordPress.tv

This week’s Blog Herald WordPress News is WordPress News: iPhones Up, WordPress Widgets API, 2.8 Delayed, International WordPress.tv, and More, and I’ve covered a lot of WordPress news you can use: iPhone for WordPress is in the iTunes store. WordPress Widgets will use new Widgets API as of WordPress 2.8. Security authentication will improve with […]

Firewalling and Hack Proofing Your WordPress Blog

Blog Security is one of the top security blogs out there keeping an eye on all things blog security and WordPress. They’ve just released two great articles WordPress fans need to check out. First is news of a video and blog post by Guvnr called “10 Tips to Make WordPress Hack Proof. The effort involved […]

Exploring Social Media Tools Series

In October of 2008, I started a series called “Exploring Social Media” on the Blog Herald. The challenge was to dig into the myriad choices and options to dance the social dance online, to network, share, inform, and educate with the various tools available. I began by asking people to define social media, since it […]

bbPress News, Tips, and Plugins

Recently, Matt Mullenweg has been fending off questions about bbPress, the popular open source, free forum platform. This past weekend at WordCamp Denver, and last month at WordCamp Las Vegas, audience members begged for an update on the status of bbPress. He joked in Denver that he felt he was being stalked by bbPress fans. […]

WordPress News Summary: WordCamps, WordPress Meetups, WordPress PowerPoint, FeedBurner and Flash Warnings

This week’s Blog Herald WordPress News covers “Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searchable, iPhone App Tested, and More” including: March is WordPress month with more WordCamps and WordPress Meetups than ever. Will April beat it? Lester Chan makes a WordPress PowerPoint Template for presentations. WordPress wins the Best Irish […]

The Year of Original Content: I’ve Declared War

Last week on the Blog Herald, I declared this is to be the “Year of Original Content“. I ranted about my ongoing battle to educate you and protect myself and others from content theft. This isn’t an issue that impacts the few and famous. Everyone is being scraped and having their content stolen. It is […]

WordPress News: LiveJournal Migration Improved, WordPress Plugin Search Improved, bbPress Updated, and More

I’ve just posted this week’s WordPress News: Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searchable, iPhone App Tested, and More on the Blog Herald. Can you spot a WordPress blog? Are you sure? WordPress 2.7.1 released. Improvements on the WordPress Plugin Directory search functions. Help for those transferring from LiveJournal to […]

WordPress.com Maintenance Downtime on Sunday, February 15, 2009

WordPress.com warns that the free blog hosting service will be down for maintenance starting Sunday, February 15, 2009, at 20:00 GMT (noon PST, 3PM EST) for maintenance and upgrade improvements. This should only be a few seconds to a couple minutes. This does not impact full version and self-hosted versions of WordPress. The maintenance probably […]