WordPress School: Polls and Surveys

Coming up soon in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course is a huge section on interactivity with WordPress, learning about comments, integrating social media, social media automation, and how to encourage and support such interactivity without draining your time, energy, and emotional being. To help you get started thinking about how you can use your […]

WordPress School: Site Master Plan

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. Tony Robbins A website is an intangible, a virtual nothing in which we create something tangible to human perception. When it boils right down to it, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created nothing with WordPress. WordPress isn’t a physical object you can […]

Research on the WordPress, Web Development, and Web Design Job Market

In 2012 and 2013, I did extensive research for the grant program to develop and rewrite the Web Developer degree program at Clark College. This research included an analysis of current and future job opportunities for students graduating with that degree with a solid understanding of WordPress. Now that the program has completed its first […]

WordPress I Course: Summer at Clark College

My WordPress I course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon, is open for registration for Summer Quarter 2014. The course begins July 7, 2014, on Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:30-9:30PM. This is a five credit hour course, 50 hours of all WordPress basics in 8 weeks. The size […]

It’s About Access

If you have a few minutes today, watch this. Oh, watch it anyway. And share it. It won a Webby, the equivalent of the Oscar for the web world. And I have to admit that at the end, I cried. Seriously. Like those in the satirical episode, I don’t live in the wildest woolliest of […]

Blog Exercises: How to Create a Blogger Identity

A rebroadcast of “How Much Does Your Name Matter?” from Freakonomics Radio looked at the impact of a name on society, perception, prejudice, and ability to succeed. Indeed, there is some evidence that a name can influence how a child performs in school and even her career opportunities. There’s also the fact that different groups […]

Fall 2013 WordPress College Courses

Registration is now open for the two WordPress college courses I teach at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, and Portland Community College at Rock Creek in Beaverton, just west of Portland, Oregon. See Classes and Workshops for details. I’ve been working with Robert Hughes of the Computer Technology Department at Clark College for almost two […]

Blog Exercises: Are You a Victim of the Past?

Have you seen the fun video released to promote the then new television show, Portlandia on IFC, recently renewed for another year or two? It’s called “Dream of the 90s” and is part of your homework for this blog exercise. The story is that Jason went on a trip from Los Angles to Portland, Oregon, […]

Nelson Mandela Tribute

In January 2011, Nelson Mandela became a trending topic on Twitter as false rumors of his death circulated the world. He was 92 at the time and this was one in a long string of stories shaking the world’s confidence in his survival. Today, at age 94, those rumors seem more prophetic as the world […]

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 […]

Classes and Workshops

The following are classes and workshops offered by Lorelle VanFossen. Workshops and Courses Lorelle offers a wide range of WordPress, web publishing, web writing, social media, and blogging courses, along with some other related topics such as family history on the web, photography, and Scrivener. Here are some of the latest offerings. Introduction to WordPress: […]

7 Blogging Steps Even Veteran Bloggers Forget

Originally published in Blogger and Podcaster Magazine and updated. I write for a variety of online and offline magazines. They’ve graciously permit me to republish my articles. Participating in a recent multiple guest blogger event, I edited and review posts by many top bloggers before publishing. I was rather stunned to find that even veteran […]

PDX WordPress Meetup Group: WordPress Codex Night

The WordPress Meetup Group in Portland, Oregon, has invited me to tonight’s meetup at the US Bancorps Building in downtown PDX to talk about the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, and how to contribute. I’ll show them some basics about the Codex and we’ll spend a couple hours working on maintenance tasks […]

Basic Facts and Resources You Need to Know Now About Web Accessibility

Last night I gave a presentation for an amazing group of web designers and developers in Portland, Oregon. I spoke about web accessibility, a long time passion of mine. My co-presenter was Winslow Parker from the Oregon Commission for the Blind who has been teaching screen reading and computer techniques to the blind. He’s also […]

Blog Bashing: Beware Complacency

In “5 Ways to Rid Complacency From Your Blog” on Daily Blog Tips, Bob Bessette writes about how to mix things up in the new year on your blog: If you’ve owned a blog for a while there’s a good chance that complacency may have already set in. Dictionary.com defines complacency as “a feeling of […]