WordCamp Las Vegas: By the Numbers Presentation

Last weekend I presented “By the Numbers” at WordCamp Las Vegas, covering web analytics and blog statistics. I spoke about which numbers you should be paying attention to, and which you can ignore, and ripped apart some myths around the stats we love to watch. The focus was on the statistics we get with our […]

Top Tips for Making Presentations

As a long time teacher and lecturer, and also offering the occassional workshop on public speaking, I love learning about what others think are the best tips for helping people make presentations. Today’s world of presentations have changed. Even simple school lessons are now using computers, laptops, handheld computers, and digital images and projectors to […]

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: 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: Do You Teach or Lecture?

Do you teach or lecture on your site? We all write with a specific “voice” and “style,” representing our perspective on the information we are presenting. On this site, I’m a teacher, sharing with you lessons to help you blog, use WordPress, and publishing on the web. You may share your expertise or your experiences […]

Blog Exercises: What Are You Talking About?

“What ya talking about?” The first time a southerner from North Carolina hit me with that question, I was stopped in my tracks. I had to think. I was talking. In fact, I was saying something eloquent and intelligent. Something I needed the other person to understand. Clearly I wasn’t making my point. At the […]

Classes and Workshops

The following are classes and workshops offered by Lorelle VanFossen. Writing for the Web June 3 – July 8, 2013 Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am – noon in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. USD $179 This writing class […]

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 […]

DuckDuckGo: The Search Engine You Need to Meet

Recently, DuckDuckGo has been turning up in my referrers list. Curious about the name, and thinking it was a spam site, DuckDuckGo needed investigation. Seems I’ve been missing out on what could be the major competition to Google as a search engine. Here is a quick summary of what I learned about DuckDuckGo. It is […]

Update WordPress Now: WordPress 3.4.2 Released

WordPress 3.4.2 Maintenance and Security Release arrived today, and it’s time to update. This is both a maintenance and security release, therefore it is mandatory, not optional. Recently, I wrote about keeping WordPress updated for security reasons, and I’m singing the same song again. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Use the automatic, one-click update feature. In […]

What You Most Need to Know About WordPress

At the recent WordCamp Portland 2012, I was asked by several attendees to cover the basics of WordPress and we came up with What You Most Need to Know About WordPress. Here are the “notes” from that unconference presentation. The Difference Between Categories and Tags I hear this question at WordCamps, from readers, students, and […]

WordPress Codex Night Success and PDX Saturday Codex Party

Last night’s PDX WordPress Meetup Group: WordPress Codex Night was a resounding success. In just under two hours, 130 changes were made to the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users. On the informal WordPress Documentation Team Task List, 49 “things to do” were added which will become deleted files and pages, redirects, new […]

Help Needed with WebVisions WordPress Theme Developers Panel

Webvisions is in Portland, Oregon, May 16-18, 2012, and I’ll be there again this year leading an awesome panel of WordPress Theme designers and developers, and I need your help. For over eleven years, Webvisions has been the go to conference for exploring the future of design, content creation, user experience, and business strategies on […]

WordPress Stats and Numbers: Breaking Their Own Records

Working on developing a core of WordPress classes for Clark College and preparing for the next “Introduction to WordPress” college course in a couple weeks, I’ve put together some statistics on WordPress you might find helpful – and stunning. WordPress continues to break records set by others, but more often lately, break records set by […]