Blog Exercises: The IKEA Effect for Bloggers

The Ikea Effect was coined by researchers who found out what we all know but rarely admit, we put too much ownership into our own brainchild ideas and concepts. In other words, we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and creations. If you have ever been around kids, you’ve probably had that […]

Example of a Perfect Personal Blog

I’m working on a series of articles about personal blogging, but I wanted to share with you a perfect example of a personal blog. It’s by my cousin, Duke DesRochers. You may remember Duke from the story I did on him called, “Future Social Media Renaissance Man,” on Lorelle on WordPress or the one on […]

Web Hacks, Worms, Infections, and Viruses: Is Your Blog Prepared?

I just released “Downadup Worm Infection: Cyber Attacks on the Rise in 2009” on the Blog Herald, the first in a short series on security issues facing bloggers and web users in 2009. The Downadup Work has infected more than 3 million sites worldwide and is spreading. Most of these sites are in Asia, but […]

Creating Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles

In part one of this two part series on “everything you could possibly want to know about titles and headlines on your blog”, I wrote about how to write effective, attention-getting headlines and titles, and in this part, I’m going to give you more than you might ever want to know about how to maximize […]

Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog

If it bleeds, it leads. Punchy. Catchy. Attention-getting. Insightful. Instructive. Incentive. Luring. Fishing. Bait. Hook. These are all terms used to describe an effectively written title or headline for an article. The words chosen must provide a powerful incentive to make the reader want to read. To make them want to buy the magazine, newspaper, […]

In Search of the Perfect Layout

Positioniseverything.net has led the pack in exposing and fixing web page layouts for a long time. Many websites today are designed using their design basics and CSS browser hacks, trying to fix what shouldn’t be broken in browsers, but is. Now, they have a new website layout design and a great article on In Search […]

The Perfect WordPress Dashboard

There as been a lot of news about the new wordpress.com dashboard, and I thought I would describe my perfect WordPress Dashboard, along with a few improvements that could be done with the WordPress Administration Panels. The perfect WordPress Dashboard would provide “me” with the information “I need”. That’s a lot to ask, but in […]

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: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

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” […]

Blog Exercises for April

April seemed to fly by in this Blog Exercises series. Have you been able to keep up now that we are done with month four of improving your blog? A lot of the blog exercises this month deal with interactivity and links, tips for building a community with your site. One of my favorite exercises […]

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: 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 […]