Tips for A Good Corporate Blogging Guidelines

The Rambling Librarian addresses the issue of blogging guidelines for employees with a subtitle of “What might make a good corporate blogging guideline?”. I tend to agree with that premise. You don’t need a lawsuit or negative publicity in order to do things right. Basically, the guidelines are to manage employees but not in an […]

Blog Exercises: If You Had a Dream Speech

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day out on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the […]

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 […]

Blog Exercises: Comments Policy

We started with the Bloggers Code of Ethics in our blog exercises on site policies, starting you off on the right foot by knowing where you will draw your lines in the sand when it comes to your rights and responsibilities as a blogger. In this Blog Exercise, we are going to tackle the next […]

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” […]

Blog Exercises: Stand Up For Freedom of Speech

There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven…baaaad words.” That’s what they told […]

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 […]

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: When Will You Not Link?

There are few people I hate in this world. I think I can count them on one hand, mostly on two fingers. We all have them, people who did us wrong and taught us to disrespect, dread, dislike, and even hate them. As tolerant as we wish we all were, that’s just the way of […]

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 […]

Creating Footnotes in WordPress

Among the many techniques students and clients request in my WordPress and blogging workshops and classes1, requests for creating footnotes in WordPress are rare, but they do happen. There are very distinctive differences between traditional writing and web publishing styles.2 Footnotes have been replaced by links to cite a reference or resource to support the […]

Blog Exercises: Category Cross-Pollination

In these Blog Exercises, I am faced with a category quandary. For the most part, these are blogging tips, so they should go into my Blogging Tips category as well as Blog Exercises category, right? Maybe right. These Blog Exercises are meant to have some form of order, though they may be done in any […]

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 […]

Blog Exercises: Make Post Titles Matter

Post titles are the titles of the articles you publish on your site. They represent the subject matter of the article. Newspapers and magazines are famous for their sensationalism when it comes to titles, lurking in readers with “Sexy Siren Stabs Six.” Or they include number counts to impress. “101 Best Ways to Cook a […]