Blog Exercises: Blog a Conversation

In this ongoing series called Blog Exercises, today you will blog a conversation. “I don’t want to.” “Sure, you do.” “Nah. Don’t want to.” “This is a chance to improve your blogging.” “Uh-huh.” “This is a change to improve your writing skills.” “Nope.” “You will do it because I said so. Got it?” “Okay.” Writing […]

Blogging Tools: DownThemAll Browser Add-on

DownThemAll! Firefox Extension is another tool for your blogging toolbox. As a reminder, most power bloggers use Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Not just because they are “better” in the terms of meeting web standards, but also because of their powerful extendable features. Browser extensions, add-ons, or plugins allow you to extend the features and […]

Words and Pictures Course at Newspace Center for Photography

I will be teaching Words and Pictures: Photoblogging and Web Publishing for Photographers at Newspace Center for Photography for 4 Wednesdays, May 11 – June 1 from 6:30-9:30PM in Portland Oregon. This is an intimate teaching location and limited seating, so register now for your spot. Teaching WordPress at the client, college, and workshop level […]

Blog Exercises: Define Your Community

In this Blog Exercise, it is time to start building a community around your blog. If you have one, it’s time to re-evaluate it to ensure you keep it. We will start with defining your community. Your blog topic should give you a clear indication about demographics of your online community, but it might not […]

WordPress School: The Article Series

To help me teach you WordPress from the inside out in this free online course, we’ve been focused on creating a five-part article series to learn the various WordPress content features and functionality. Each article offers you the opportunity to dive into how WordPress works right out of the box, focusing on the content and […]

WordPress School: Intrasite Links

On the test site for Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course you started a five part article series, each one exploring different content features and functions of WordPress. So far, you’ve explored lists, headings, preparing images to upload to WordPress, the visual and text editors, embedding video, creating a gallery, blockquotes and citations, and the […]

WordPress School: All the HTML You Need to Know

In my WordPress community class the other night, we had 15 minutes left when I told the class I was about to teach them how to speak HTML before class ended – well, enough HTML to publish in WordPress. They didn’t believe it. Believe it. It took about 6 minutes. I hope to do the […]

WordPress School: Paragraphs and Line Breaks

The previous assignment in Lorelle’s WordPress School covered the visual and text editors in WordPress. In this assignment, I’d like to focus on making paragraphs within both editors. A paragraph in HTML is a container holding contextual content, the written word. The HTML of a paragraph opens and closes with the paragraph tag. If we […]

WordPress School: Visual and Text Editors

In this assignment in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course we are going to explore the Text and Visual Editors in WordPress. WordPress features the two editors on all posts and Pages. The Visual Editor is the WYSIWYMG editor for writing content. This means it is the What You See Is What You Might Get […]

Web Writing HTML Entities Cheat Sheet

Over the years I’ve copied and saved HTML Character Entities that I use on a regular basis, and I thought I’d share my cheat sheet. These are important to me as a technical web publisher specializing in writing blogging and WordPress tutorials, so I’ve explained why and how I use them in the table below. […]

WordPress School: Headings

Many people will tell you that the images you use in a published post are the most important visual elements on a web page. Don’t believe them. It is an HTML content tag that is often overlooked that is the most powerful visual element on a web page: the heading. At this point in Lorelle’s […]

WordPress School: Publish a Post

In Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, it is time to start digging into the post content of your test site. In other words, it is time to start loosening the reigns of your imagination. We are going to start with an article series, a series of posts linked together once completed. It begins with […]

Presentation: Blog Your Passion

The following are the presentations notes for my workshop called “Blogging Your Passion” at Making it in Changing Times in 2015. In 2010 I was in Chicago for SOBCon, the Successful Online Business Conference, and I had an amazing encounter with a woman on the crowded downtown streets: …I was storming away from the last […]

Research on the WordPress, Web Development, and Web Design Job Market

In 2012 and 2013, I did extensive research for the grant program to develop and rewrite the Web Developer degree program at Clark College. This research included an analysis of current and future job opportunities for students graduating with that degree with a solid understanding of WordPress. Now that the program has completed its first […]

The Web is All About The Writing

Reading “7 Things You Need to Know about SEO in 2014” from Compete Pulse, I was fascinating to read that “size matters:” Most blog posts range between 400 and 600 words, but the ideal length for highest ranking is actually around 1,500. Many still believe that a successful website is one that offers the information […]