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 […]

Hawaii Macintosh and Apple Users Society Macoctoberfest Photographs

Here are the first of a collection series of photographs from my incredible experiences at Hawaii Geek Week 2008. The first event was the Hawaii Macintosh and Apple Users Society (HMAUS) gather for their 30th Anniversary Mactoberfest on Saturday, October 18, 2008. I covered the details on the Blog Herald in Hawaii Geek Week Begins […]

WordPress Plugins for Images, Photographs, and Graphics

Photographs and graphic images are an integral part of our blogs today. We want to show people what our words often can’t. Besides, pictures are fun to look at. WordPress offers fairly simple image uploading and the automatic creation of thumbnails, but there are a lot more you can do with your images with WordPress […]

CSS Bar Graphs and Charts

Apples to Oranges has info on making bar graphs and charts with CSS, a technique I experimented with ages ago in my popular series of CSS Experiments in the experiments with creating Backgrounds, Bar Charts, and Graphs with CSS techniques. The technique isn’t very difficult. The background of a container is set to repeat for […]

Blog Exercises: I Thought You Would Appreciate This Gratuitous Picture

For many years it was thought that every post published on a blog had to feature a gratuitous image, some photograph that would lure people to click through and read the article. The myth perpetuated itself, which myths tend to do, and many still publish content with gratuitous imagery. A gratuitous image is one that […]

Blog Exercises: May Summary

Is is June already? Where did May go? If you joined us for these Blog Exercises in the month of May, we were a pretty busy lot. Time was spent on blog policies and security at the start of the month. I gave you assignments with tips on how to protect yourself by owning your […]

Blog Exercises: Making Lists

Got a list? Today’s blog exercise is a technical one. We’re looking at making lists in your blog posts. You would think that something like a bullet or numbered list would be simple. No discussion or training involved. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as you would think. In the blog exercise on making a weekly […]

Blog Exercises: Excerpts and Continue Reading

Encountered the front page of a blog where the posts ran on and on and on and on, stretching across the length of the page? Do you ever wish you had more control over the length of your posts on the front page of your site? This Blog Exercise explores the use of the “more” […]

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: Who Changed Your Life?

This is one of the special Blog Exercises this year, a chance to really celebrate who you are and those who helped make you. As we travel through life, people change our lives on a daily basis as well as for a lifetime. Today’s exercise is focused on those who stepped in your path and […]

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: 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: 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: What Words Do You Abuse Redundantly?

So, it’s word check time. Well, time to check all the words we abuse. Specifically, all the words we abuse redundantly and unnecessarily. And I’d like us to focus on the little words we add to our content, words like like, and, so, because, cause, cuz, specifically, well, and so on. In the last two […]

Blog Exercises: Preview Posts

Do you preview a post before publishing? If not, consider adding this extra step to the publishing process. Why? I’m human. So are you. We mess things up. No matter how careful you are, you will make mistakes. That’s life. By double checking what your post will look like before you release it to the […]