Blog Exercises: Polls and Surveys Follow-up

In Blog Exercises: Polls and Surveys I asked you to create a poll on your site asking for input from your readers. Today’s exercise is on creating a follow-up poll. In that exercise, I invited readers to respond to the question, “What publishing platform are you currently using?” The answers to that are typical, skewed […]

Weekly Digest: On The Road to WordCamp, Sponsored Themes, Selling Your Blog, NoFollow, and More

The Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress this week will be shorter, and do not expect a Weekly Digest next week as I will be in San Francisco playing with my WordPress friends. I’ll have a ton of news on my blog following the WordCamp conference! To subscribe to the Weekly Digest category of Lorelle […]

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 […]

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: Editorial Calendar Check-in

If you have been with me since January on these blog exercises, it is time to check in with your editorial calendar again. If you are new, welcome, and take time to read the previous posts on the editorial calendar to help you catch up. Blog Exercises: The Editorial Calendar Blog Exercises: Blogging with the […]

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 […]

Blog Exercises: Add Industry Events to Your Editorial Calendar

In the blog exercise to create an editorial calendar, I gave you many ideas for setting self-assignments and deadlines for content throughout the year on your blog. Don’t forget to investigate your industry to discover events, conferences, and news to add to the calendar. Whether you go or not, take time to research calendars and […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]

Blog Exercises: How to Respond to a Trackback

In the first blog exercise on trackbacks I explained how trackbacks work and how to respond to trackbacks. It’s time to revisit the concept of how to respond to a trackback. In the exercise, I described the unique quality of trackbacks for tracking conversations across the web. You publish something, someone likes it and publishes […]

Blog Exercises: Post-Op Care Content

I recently had some minor surgery and received an extensive list of post-operative care instructions. I was amazed at the in depth detail they went into, so I asked about it. The practitioner told me that they spent a year collecting all the questions people had about each surgery and treatment and created a paper […]

Blog Exercises for March

March was a busy month in my Blog Exercises series. Wow, are we already done with the third month in this year long series? The participants explored a wide variety of blog exercises on editing, blogger identity, content organization, and web writing. There were exercises to motivate and inspire you, and help you inspire your […]

Blog Exercises: How Many Words in a Link?

How many words should you put into a link? Is there a rule? There isn’t a rule but there are good standards and practices. These state that two words should be the minimum, and only enough words to compel someone to click through to the linked source. The words must also imply the link’s destination […]