Creating Footnotes in WordPress

Among the many techniques students and clients request in my WordPress and blogging workshops and classes1, requests for creating footnotes in WordPress are rare, but they do happen. There are very distinctive differences between traditional writing and web publishing styles.2 Footnotes have been replaced by links to cite a reference or resource to support the […]

Blog Exercises: How to Publish Code

I blog about the technical side of blogging, about WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, HTML, CSS, web design – code. I often blog about code. And people ask me code questions. I’ve become an expert in writing code so it looks like code on web pages. The time may come, or you may have already […]

Blog Exercises: Update Your Author Description

Who are you? What do you do? How do you let the world know who you are on your blog? We’ll dig into your About Page later. For now, this blog exercise is dedicated to updating your profile on your site. In my popular series, “Managing Multiple Bloggers in WordPress,” I covered more than you […]

Blog Exercises: Fix Images in Your Content

One of the most popular help requests on the WordPress forums is how to make the post text wrap around images. I wrote “Wrapping Text Around Images” in the WordPress Codex as a starting point many years ago. I explain it further in “How to Add Images in Your Post Content” on Lorelle Teaches, going […]

Blog Exercises: Gravatars

This Blog Exercise will help you update your global recognition on WordPress and all Gravatar-enabled sites. I’m going to let TimeThief of one cool site, a site dedicated to all things WordPress blogging, tips, tools, and tutorials, explain Gravatars in her post, “Gravatars for Global Recognition.” Whether you blog under your real name or under […]

Writing for the Web Course

February 18 – March 25, you will find me teaching “Writing for the Web” for Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education on Mondays from 1:30-4:30PM in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. Come join me! This is the first class of its kind at the […]

Check Out the New Media Manager in WordPress

WordPress.com users were greeted with a new Media Manager over the weekend. This is the new media uploader coming in WordPress 3.5 when it releases December 5, 2012. For most of us, this is a long-awaited, dream come true. The clunky WordPress Image Uploader is gone, replaced with one more visual and easy-to-use. The announcement […]

How Many is Too Many WordPress Plugins?

In “How Many WordPress Plugins Should You Install on Your Site?” WPBeginner asks a question I bring up in my workshops, training programs, and college courses: How many WordPress Plugins are too many. The article brings up some valid points worth considering when choosing WordPress Plugins. Are WordPress Plugins a security risk? How would you […]

Introduction to WordPress Course at Clark College Continuing Education

Starting October 16, 2012, I’m teaching the Introduction to WordPress at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington. This is the course many of you have been waiting for – affordable and covering the basics you need to know about WordPress. The CTEC 280 Clark College WordPress Introduction course continues as a four […]

Blogrolls Gone in WordPress. How to Save Your Links.

For the past few months, rumors were flying that WordPress was going to remove the Links/Blogroll feature of WordPress. As of August 2012, it is now gone from many WordPress.com. MacManx, Happiness Engineer at WordPress.com, recently stated: The Links section was removed from the core WordPress.org software, which means that it will probably be removed […]

Adding, Deleting, and Changing a WordPress Category

Time to add a new category to WordPress? Have enough content within a specific topic and want to add it to your category lists? Changing your mind about a category name and wish to change it? Want to delete an entire category worth of posts because you don’t want to cover that topic anymore? Adding […]

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 […]

Evaluating What Makes a Shopping Cart Work Best

Before you check out your next WordPress shopping cart or ecommerce WordPress Plugin, you need to read this. In April 2011, Smashing Magazine published “Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design” in their UX (User Experience) column exploring what they called the “harsh reality” of e-commerce websites. According to recent e-commerce studies, at least 59.8% of […]

Update WordPress Now: Reuters Hacked

It is an old song. I’ve sung it for years. UPDATE WORDPRESS NOW! Reuters was hacked recently and many blame WordPress, though most honest reporters are quick to state that it is the webmaster/site owners fault for not updating. Seems they were running a version from over a year ago. According to PC Magazine’s Security […]

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 […]