How You Can Give Back for WordPress Birthday Month

As many of you know, one of the things that has long been near and dear to my heart is the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users. I’m so pleased to be part of the drive in May to get everyone to contribute to the Codex and to celebrate the 8th birthday of […]

We Give and Give and Give – But We Still Have to Pay the Rent

A question has been asked. A powerful question. One that nearly brought me to my knees. It needs to be asked again, but you must also understand the context behind it. Why do givers not ask to be paid? Liz Strauss of Successful and Outstanding Bloggers is asking the question in On a Blue December […]

Are you a Blog Curator or Caregiver?

In Blogging is About Caring Not Curating, Anne Helmond makes a very good point about how a blog is different from a directory, catalog, and many other “categories” a blog can be dumped into, summarizing it with: A blog is more than a collection of blog posts on a certain topic. A blog is never […]

Google Gives Tips to Eastern European Bloggers

While most of us living in a higher tech world should know these things, in honor of the expansion of Google into Eastern Europe, the Google Webmaster Central blog offers advice and tips for Eastern European webmasters and bloggers. In 2006 we ramped up on international webmaster issues and particularly tried to support Eastern Europe. […]

Bad-Behavior Continues to Give the Finger to Comment Spammers

The brilliant brain behind Bad Behavior, the comment spam fighter that “gives the finger to comment spammers” before they gain access to your blog, is Michael Hampton. Before I get more to bragging on my buddy, Michael, I’d like to announce that the latest update to Bad Behavior, version 2.09, has been released and version […]

Happy Taggiversary to Technorati

Technorati’s second birthday is today, so kudos and salutes should abound in celebration. To honor their birthday, they are releasing new and updated Tag Pages, part of their constant striving to become better and more reliable as a social networking service and specialized search engine. Technorati revolutionized the blogosphere and the web by taking full […]

Give a Wink and a Smile

There is a new social bookmark/tagging search engine on the horizon. Wink explains its service this way: Warning: This isn’t your Dad’s search engine… Wink lets you search across the Tagosphere. If you’re using del.icio.us, Digg, Slashdot, and/or Yahoo MyWeb, this is your search engine. Find the latest links that people like you think are […]

Give the Gift of Love to WordPress

If you are using WordPress, WordPress.com, and/or are a fan of WordPress, consider giving the gift of love to WordPress this year. It’s never to late to help support the development of WordPress, one of the most popular and fastest growing blogging tools around. You can help in four ways. All except one are very […]

WordPress Template Files and Style Sheets – Give Them a Name

I love the modular template files in WordPress. The ability to mix and match the building blocks to create custom web pages is great. The problem comes when working on the style sheet for the different looks. I often have to track down which style belongs to which template file. Solution? Give them a name? […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

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: Writing Poetry and Recipes in Your Blog

Do you publish poetry on your site? Feature many quotes? Share recipes? Addresses? If so, you may need to learn how to publish content with single lines instead of double. In WordPress and other publishing platforms with a WYSIWYMG interface, hit the Enter (Return) key and a wide or double space will appear. Each line […]

Blog Exercises: Do You Teach or Lecture?

Do you teach or lecture on your site? We all write with a specific “voice” and “style,” representing our perspective on the information we are presenting. On this site, I’m a teacher, sharing with you lessons to help you blog, use WordPress, and publishing on the web. You may share your expertise or your experiences […]

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” […]