WordPress Featured in Wall Street Journal

Matt Mullenweg of Automattic, WordPress.com, the self-hosted version of WordPress, was featured today on the Wall Street Journal Business talking about the fact that WordPress now supports 14% of all websites in the world, approximately 1 in 6 globally. Matt talked about the future of WordPress and made these three points. WordPress as a CMS: […]

WordPress News: LiveJournal Migration Improved, WordPress Plugin Search Improved, bbPress Updated, and More

I’ve just posted this week’s WordPress News: Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searchable, iPhone App Tested, and More on the Blog Herald. Can you spot a WordPress blog? Are you sure? WordPress 2.7.1 released. Improvements on the WordPress Plugin Directory search functions. Help for those transferring from LiveJournal to […]

WordPress News: WordPress Resolutions, Tattoos, LiveJournal, Converters, Security, Plugins, and More

I just published WordPress News: Buddy Press Almost Ready, WordCamp Las Vegas Success, Plugin Author Tips, WordPress Tattoo on the Blog Herald covering: WordPress news about Matt Mullenweg’s New Year’s Resolutions set a plan for WordPress in 2009. BuddyPress nearing release from beta. WordCamp Las Vegas was a resounding success. This weekend is WordCamp Jakarta. […]

Wall Street Journal Blog Bash – And Some Truths

Well, it seems that the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have the highest opinion of blogs and blogging. Okay, while it is one person’s opinion published in the Wall Street Journal, that opinion may speak for what a lot of people, and businesses, are thinking. Steve Rubel’s review of the article sums it up quite well, […]

Blogger as Researcher – Almost a Journalist?

In a short and well-written post, Gail Fisher of the The Los Angeles Times writes about the “Journalist as Researcher” on Poynter Online. While aimed at journalists, it made me think about the blogger as a form of journalist, reporting upon the world around them. Here are some important points she makes. Read: Be well-read. […]

How News Journalists Blog the Web

In my recent research into who blogs and how they blog, I found this report from Editors Weblog that says: More than half of journalists use blogs According to Annual Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey of the Media51% of journalists, combared to 11% of all US internet users (according to eWeek), are using […]

Help Spread the Word – Writing for the Web Class

There is still room available in my Writing for the Web course at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. This professional development course runs from June 11 – 27, 2013 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9AM – Noon. The class size is limited so there […]

Blog Exercises: What Are You Missing?

Frogs redefine my thoughts about amphibians annually. As a child, spring was for tadpoles and summers were for frogs in the swamps, ponds, and ditches around my country ranch in the Pacific Northwest. Moving to Oregon’s Coastal Mountain range west of Portland, my winters are spent driving up the foothills like a crazy person, avoiding […]

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 […]

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: April Current Events

It’s time to blog the news and current events for April in our Blog Exercises. Has it been easy or hard to find news and current events to publish once a month on your site? Sometimes the muse hits us when we learn of a newsworthy event that directly relates to us. Other times we […]

Writing for the Web Course Starts June 3, 1013

I will be teaching “Writing for the Web” at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington, Tuesdays and Thursdays, June 3 – July 8, 2013. The class will be at the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just a few minutes from downtown Portland, Oregon. Writing on the web is now […]

Blog Exercises: Where Are You?

After agreeing to take on a writing assignment regarding Oregon history, I happily settled down to do a little preliminary online research. Because some of the towns I needed to research were located in areas I was not completely familiar with, I was relying on their local websites to point me to what I needed […]

The Future of Blogging – With a Glimpse Backwards

In “What’s next for blogging: I try to predict the future” by Yesterday’s news, the author, a Creative and Professional Writing Major at Bemidji State University in Minnestoa, used fantastic visuals to take us on a journey through the development of blogging and the blogging industry for a class on blogs and wikis. She makes […]