WordPress 3.2 Released: Faster, Prettier, Powerful

WordPress 3.2 has been officially released, this time after a fairly short testing time period. To upgrade, use the built-in automatic upgrade. According to the announcement, this is the 15th major release of WordPress. Wow, that just doesn’t seem possible, and yet it also feels like too few. How far WordPress has come since 2003, […]

Future Laptops Faster and Less Battery Drain – But Cooler?

The New York Times reports that Intel chips will run faster and use less power, and be even smaller. The microprocessor chips, which Intel plans to begin making in the second half of this year, are designed for computers but they could also have applications in consumer devices. Their combination of processing power and energy […]

Genealogy Blog: The Fast Method of Setting Up a Blog

Here is the fast method of setting up a genealogy blog, or any blog. 1. Write a Plan of Action As discussed, it’s important to have a plan before you attack. Otherwise, it’s a little messy. Every good plan starts with a good purpose. The purpose of my genealogy blog is: Displaying our family tree. […]

Reporting on Your Blog: Get Information Online, Fast, and Accurate

Al Tompkins reports on Poynter Online about “How to Get Online and Get Information Fast” with tips and techniques you can use for your blog posts, stories and articles. He tracks a news story he was a part of it step-by-step through the process of how he and his team found information on a nearby […]

Learn Fast on How to Learn Theories

HeadRush’s Creating Passionate Users’s post on “Crash course in learning theory” is a great Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of a variety of learning theories. Learning theories are methods and techniques of teaching others how to learn. While you might think that this is only important to instructors and teachers, it is critical to anyone, including […]

WordPress: Faster Loading Than Ever Before

I must have missed it when reporting on recent news about WordPress, but this is news that deserves its own space. For ages I’ve been battling with long waits after hitting the Save button on the Write Post panel. Some of these waits have reminded me of the early Internet days where a cup of […]

Fast Computer Crash Recovery with WordPress

As if we haven’t had enough trouble running from all the hurricanes smashing into the US Gulf Coast where we are temporarily living, I’ve been battling a summer of computer crashes. In one month, I had five computer crashes between two computers. My laptop finally returned from the manufacturer, delayed by Hurricane Katrina. They put […]

Blog Exercises: What Are You Missing?

Frogs redefine my thoughts about amphibians annually. As a child, spring was for tadpoles and summers were for frogs in the swamps, ponds, and ditches around my country ranch in the Pacific Northwest. Moving to Oregon’s Coastal Mountain range west of Portland, my winters are spent driving up the foothills like a crazy person, avoiding […]

Blog Exercises: May Random Editing Day

May. It’s starting to warm up outside in the north, and growing a bit chilly down under, but it’s that time again. It’s the May Random Editing Day. In this Blog Exercise you will need to edit five random posts from among your thousands – okay, maybe dozens of published articles. What should you look […]

Blog Exercises: Prepare for Summer

It’s Editorial Calender check-in and check up time. May is the shift from spring to summer. From blossoming flowers to green leafed trees casting shade, the weather is changing, bringing warmer days to the northern hemisphere and colder temperatures down under. For those of us living in the Pacific Northwestern United States, we are experiencing […]

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: Fall in Love with Words

There are certain clues that tell you how much a restaurant will cost. If the word “cuisine” appears in the advertising, it will be expensive. If they use the word “food,” it will be moderately priced. However, if the sign says “eats,” even though you’ll save money on food, your medical bills may be quite […]

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: Does Your Site Look Spammy?

Does your site look spammy? How would you know whether or not your site looks spammy? It’s time for a spam check. Web design is hard, especially if you aren’t an expert. Yet, in many ways you are an expert if you are a fan of the web. You’ve seen enough sites to know the […]