Best Websites for Writers from Writer’s Digest

Writer’s Digest released their “Best Websites for Writers” which is a great resource for the serious writer or person who wants to learn more about writing and writing skills. Here are a few highlighted websites from their list. Absolute Write – Freeland Work and Guidelines Author Mania – Fiction craft building Bartleby – Quotes and […]

Websites Pushing WordPress Beyond Its Limits

I spent a LOT of time totally pushing WordPress to its limits to create my main site, so I can really respect the efforts of others to push, pull,and tweak WordPress to new limits to develop their own sites. 9Rules’ Building 9Rules post explains what they did to create their innovative membership blog. …So, at […]

Boycott Ugly Table Designed Blogs and Websites

I just heard about a great website. It came highly recommended. I was told that it was packed with tons of web design tips, techniques, and resources. I visit the site and it’s sure pretty and, indeed, packed with great web design tips, techniques, resources, and even a lot of references to web standards and […]

Bloggers Use Websites as Therapy

In a Washington Post story, Cyber-Catharsis: Bloggers Use Web Sites as Therapy, examples of how bloggers are using blogs for psychological therapy is fascinating. Nearly half of bloggers consider it a form of therapy, according to a recent survey sponsored by America Online Inc. And although some psychologists question the use of the Internet for […]

Secret Out – How Google Ranks Websites

You might have heard about it this June, but I thought it bore repeating. The secret is out on much of what Google uses to rank your website on their search engine. To read the actual patent information released to the public, see Google’s patent for their search engine ranking technique from 2005 on evaluating […]

Blog Exercises: List Your Resources

In “Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles” your blog exercise was to identify your reference articles from within your site and list them on a Page or in a post as a reference list. Today’s blog exercise is to identify and publish your resources beyond your site, the reference material and sources you count […]

Blog Exercises: Own Your Site and Protect Yourself

I hear it every day. A webmaster, developer, or designer does the site owner wrong and the site owner is victimized, helpless, and frustrated with what to do next. I’ve gotten calls in the middle of the night from people around the world trying to get help recovering their WordPress password because their “web guy” […]

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: 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: 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 […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]

Blog Exercises: Speed Blogging with CoLT

I’d like to introduce you to the work horse I use for speed blogging. It’s a web browser add-on for Firefox called CoLT. It stands for Copy Link Text. I will be offering a variety of web browser tips and tools to make blogging faster and easier throughout these Blog Exercises, and of all of […]

WordPress Anniversary: WordPress and Evil

As I look back on the ten years of WordPress, there is a dark side to blogging. While many blamed WordPress for the evil, like guns, WordPress doesn’t cause evil, people cause evil. In fact, WordPress, Automattic, and the WordPress Community has fought longer and harder against the evil doers in the world than most […]

WordPress Course at PCC-Rock Creek in Beaverton

I will be teaching a WordPress Introduction college course at Portland Community College in Beaverton, just west of Portland, Oregon, starting April 3 – June 12, 2013. The course is a hybrid online course meetings Wednesdays from 6-9PM with a minimum of two hours online per week. Called “CMS Website Creation: WordPress,” this 3 credit […]

Blog Exercises: Where Are You?

After agreeing to take on a writing assignment regarding Oregon history, I happily settled down to do a little preliminary online research. Because some of the towns I needed to research were located in areas I was not completely familiar with, I was relying on their local websites to point me to what I needed […]