WordCamp Videos Published from WordCamps Dallas and San Francisco

John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog has been putting together the final videos from WordCamp San Francisco 2009 and WordCamp Dallas. So far he’s released: WordCamp Dallas 2009: Cali Lewis – Building A Vibrant Community WordCamp Dallas 2009: The WordCamp Panel Discussion WordCamp San Francisco 2009: Chris Pirillo – Community WebVisions WordCamp San Francisco 2009: […]

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: How Long Are Your Paragraphs?

How long are your paragraphs? Have you measured them lately? One of the telling differences between traditional writing and writing for the web is the length of the paragraph. Look at the example below. Which is easier to read? On the left, the paragraphs are huge, long blocks of text. On the right, the paragraphs […]

Blog Exercises: Writing Poetry and Recipes in Your Blog

Do you publish poetry on your site? Feature many quotes? Share recipes? Addresses? If so, you may need to learn how to publish content with single lines instead of double. In WordPress and other publishing platforms with a WYSIWYMG interface, hit the Enter (Return) key and a wide or double space will appear. Each line […]

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: Stand Up For Freedom of Speech

There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven…baaaad words.” That’s what they told […]

Blog Exercises: Site Policies and Bloggers Code of Ethics

It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]

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: 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 […]

Blog Exercises: Post-Op Care Content

I recently had some minor surgery and received an extensive list of post-operative care instructions. I was amazed at the in depth detail they went into, so I asked about it. The practitioner told me that they spent a year collecting all the questions people had about each surgery and treatment and created a paper […]

Blog Exercises for March

March was a busy month in my Blog Exercises series. Wow, are we already done with the third month in this year long series? The participants explored a wide variety of blog exercises on editing, blogger identity, content organization, and web writing. There were exercises to motivate and inspire you, and help you inspire your […]

Blog Exercises: How Many Words in a Link?

How many words should you put into a link? Is there a rule? There isn’t a rule but there are good standards and practices. These state that two words should be the minimum, and only enough words to compel someone to click through to the linked source. The words must also imply the link’s destination […]

Fight Against Trackback Death

I’ve heard the many threats of trackbacks and pingbacks dying over the years, going the way of the virtual dinosaur, but I’m terrified to hear from Andraz Tori that Typepad is killing pingback functionality and stating that WordPress might be considering it, removing the joy of getting a notification that someone online is talking about […]