Have You Lost the Human Element in Your Blog?

As I catch up with all the backlog of my life and work after a solid month on the road, I’m still stoked by my amazing time spent with Alan Dean Foster.
While preparing for my meeting, I found a fascinating quote by Alan Dean Foster in an interview with Science Fiction and Fantasy News. He [...]

Dreams Can Come True: Meeting Alan Dean Foster

I’m in Arizona after a very exciting and busy series of conferences, including the very successful WordCamp Netherlands, WordCamp Phoenix, and PodCamp Arizona, visiting family living near one of my favorite authors in the world, Alan Dean Foster.
During WordCamp Phoenix and PodCampAZ, I shared with my audience that I was too excited to just [...]

WordCamp Netherlands Rocked; WordCamp Phoenix Will Rock!

WordCamp Phoenix is all set to really rock and roll with great WordPress, blogging, and SEO experts on November 13, 2009, in Arizona at the Arizona Grand Resort.
Some of the hottest folks in WordPress and web tech are lined up to speak and attend, taking advantage of PodcampAZ and Az Entrepreneurship Conference happening the [...]

WordCamp Toronto Raising the Bar This Weekend

Of all the WordCamp events to track, WordCamp Toronto this weekend, May 8-10, 2009, has been one of the most product and prolific. The Schedule is three very packed days of events, speakers, and…everything.
Starting at 8AM on Friday and closing Sunday afternoon with an awards ceremony, it’s going to be a packed weekend event [...]

Inspired by Glenda Watson Hyatt at SOBCon09

I just published “Glenda Watson Hyatt: Is Your Blog Disabled?” on the Blog Herald. I summarized the outstanding presentation the famous Left Thumb Blogger, Glenda Watson Hyatt of the Do It Myself Blog, gave at Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) this past weekend.
Glenda is a major fan and proponent of WordPress, and I [...]

Social Web: The Art of Voyeurism

As I’ve been developing my ongoing series on the Blog Herald called “Exploring Social Media,” I’m constantly intrigued and nauseated at the new voyeurism that is sweeping our world and our online social life. It’s freedom of speech and expression meets voyeurism, changing the word-of-mouth gossip world forever.
With the recent announcement of a new [...]

Exploring Social Media Tools Series

In October of 2008, I started a series called “Exploring Social Media” on the Blog Herald. The challenge was to dig into the myriad choices and options to dance the social dance online, to network, share, inform, and educate with the various tools available.
I began by asking people to define social media, since it [...]

Web Design for God’s Audience: Learning from Church Web Development

Part of my joy in being an advocate for WordPress is showcasing how WordPress is used around the world. In a fascinating discussion with Darren Hoyt, Interviews with Church Designers looks at web design and WordPress blogs from a unique perspective: Christian churches, specifically American Christian churches.
Like me, Darren admits he didn’t understand the market [...]

WordPress Post Content Sandbox Content Updated

The thirteenth blog post published on Lorelle on WordPress was Designing a WordPress Theme – Building a Post Sandbox. This post continues to be useful to WordPress Theme developers and testers, so I’ve updated it and included an easier-to-use sandbox post text file.
When designing, testing, or tweaking a WordPress Theme, you need to pay attention [...]

WordPress Themes: Start With a Solid Framework

Why I Created a WordPress Theme Framework by Justin Tadlock is a good look at the reasons why WordPress Theme designers and developers should work with a framework when designing a WordPress Theme. A strong Theme framework creates a solid canvas upon which to build your WordPress Themes.
If you are or considering building WordPress [...]

Building a Tourist Community Website With WordPress: Multilingual Contents and Translations

By Amir Helzer of ICanLocalize
With your help beginning in the first post on how to build a tourist community website with WordPress, I’ve been so honored by your collaboration and help to improve my community’s new tourist site, Baripedia, representing my town, Bariloche in Argentina.
With your guidance, you helped me determine which WordPress version [...]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Community Wins

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone

I can promise you, your site won’t be much fun at all unless you start building a community of loyal readers to interact through comments and help enrich the blogging experience for all of your readers, not just yourself. A huge part of the fandom site experience is [...]

Building a Tourist Community Website With WordPress: Content Rules

By Amir Helzer of ICanLocalize
The responses previous article, Developing a Tourist Community Site with WordPress here on Lorelle on WordPress about Baripedia showed me that we’re not alone. It’s great to see that others are using WordPress to build tourist community websites. Thanks to everyone who commented, and special thanks to those who came over [...]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Content, Content, Content Part II

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone

So you’ve finding all kinds of content for your fandom based upon our previous discussions. You’ve found a trough of information to flow into your blog. Now what? How do you get all that information into your blog, and should you? Do you need to publish everything? It’s [...]

Blog Struggles: Trackbacks Count

At a blog conference recently, I overheard the following exchange over a laptop as part of a blog review exercise:
“For your blog to be successful, you need more comments on your blog posts.”
“I have plenty of comments on my blog. See, this one has 14 comments.”
“That post has only one comment. The rest are trackbacks. [...]