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: Increase Your Thank You Ratio

As a teacher, trainer, social media expert, and advice giver on many blogs, I don’t want to hear your excuses in response to my advice. “Well, if I only had the money…” Really? Since WordPress, the tools I recommend, and the advice I offer is free. What does money have to do with anything I […]

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 […]

Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies

No matter what we do or say, there will always be bullies and mean people. Some are mean intentionally, some can hurt unintentionally. And then there are those moments when we read the black letters on the white screen too much in-between the lines and come away feeling sick to your stomach. Welcome to the […]

Happy Holidays and Onward!

We survived the Mayan Calendar. We’ve survived planets lining up. We’ve survived attacks on our person, our community, our faith, and our country. Just another year. As we charge forward this coming year, here are some things to look forward to here on Lorelle on WordPress and on my other sites, and many things to […]

WordPress Featured in Wall Street Journal

Matt Mullenweg of Automattic, WordPress.com, the self-hosted version of WordPress, was featured today on the Wall Street Journal Business talking about the fact that WordPress now supports 14% of all websites in the world, approximately 1 in 6 globally. Matt talked about the future of WordPress and made these three points. WordPress as a CMS: […]

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 […]

Prove It: What Makes You Trust a Website?

What makes you trust this site? What makes you trust me? What makes you trust any website you visit? What is it about the site that earns your trust? I’ve asked this question at most of the conferences and keynotes I’ve given over the past seven years: What makes you not trust a website? The […]

How Much Do You Charge for Web Dev/Design Services?

As part of an ongoing annual survey for the social media industry, Mark Collier offers this year’s “How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2012?” report on our industry. This is a significant survey and mostly matches the ones coming out of the WordPress 2011 State of the Word survey from self-employed respondents, WooTheme’s […]

Security and Protection: Understand the Social in a Crime Network and How to Protect Yourself

While the following is a bit off-topic, my head is spinning with all the layers and networks I’ve uncovered within this recent experience. A friend of mine called this a combination assembly line meets Wikipedia of crime social networks. It begins with my car being broken into and my purse stolen a few months ago, […]

Managing Multiple Authors: Showcasing the Authors

I’m speaking at WebVisions on “Managing Multiple Bloggers in WordPress” on Thursday, May 26, 2011, at 11:30AM in Portland, Oregon. The following is part of a series of articles on the topic and notes from my presentation. Growing up with print media, my family couldn’t get enough of Gary Larson’s The Far Side cartoon strip […]

Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins

In Dallas, August 29, 2010, at OpenCamp I presented “Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins.” Here are the WordPress Plugins and more features during my presentation. Let me first define what my qualifications for a “mind blowing WordPress Plugin” were, as I had to sift through thousands of Plugins and then filter down to include the following […]

SOBCon 2010 Chicago: What Did You Learn?

In May of 2010, over 150 of the brightest minds in online business, web publishing, blogging, and social media gathered in Chicago for the 4th annual Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon). It was an amazing experience for all with three days of non-stop business strategies and techniques for online business. And they are doing […]

WordPress Plugins News: Coffee2Code Plugin Marathon, Plugin Podcast, Plugin Developer Center, Plugin Checklist

As most of you know, I’m extremely passionate about supporting and encouraging WordPress Plugin authors. I’ve written a love letter to WordPress Plugin authors, spent a month writing over 36 posts on nothing but WordPress Plugins, published extensive tips on how to install, configure, and use WordPress Plugins and another guide for finding Plugins, “Where […]

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 […]