SEO Sitemaps Now Autodiscoverable: Easy and Automatic Roadmaps to Your Blog Content

In case you missed the news, Google’s Webmaster Central announced that in accordance with the new Sitemap.org, you do not have to submit your XML sitemap to Google or other search engines any more. Instead, you can make your sitemap “autodiscoverable” by directing the visiting web crawler to the location of the sitemap. A sitemap […]

Google Sitemaps Goes Standard With Acceptance By Microsoft and Yahoo!

The Google Blog announces the sitemap protocol has now been accepted by Yahoo! and Microsoft as a standard for webmasters to assist with website crawling and “submissions”. Last year we published the Sitemap 0.84 XML protocol as a free and easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their web sites so […]

Google Maps Web Cams

I’ve written about many of the cool tricks, tips, and things to do with Google in the past, and I have another to add to the list. Butterfat combines Google Maps with live web cams in a neat way. Arrive at the main page and you are greeted with a map of the world with […]

DuckDuckGo: The Search Engine You Need to Meet

Recently, DuckDuckGo has been turning up in my referrers list. Curious about the name, and thinking it was a spam site, DuckDuckGo needed investigation. Seems I’ve been missing out on what could be the major competition to Google as a search engine. Here is a quick summary of what I learned about DuckDuckGo. It is […]

What are the Essential WordPress Plugins You Can’t Live Without?

In my WordPress session at Barcamp Portland this past weekend, one of my favorite questions started the discussion: What are the most essential, must-have WordPress Plugins? My answer? None. Okay, not really. My honest answer is one: Akismet. Spam is the bane of our web experience. It comes in our emails and site comments. While […]

WordPress Stats and Numbers: Breaking Their Own Records

Working on developing a core of WordPress classes for Clark College and preparing for the next “Introduction to WordPress” college course in a couple weeks, I’ve put together some statistics on WordPress you might find helpful – and stunning. WordPress continues to break records set by others, but more often lately, break records set by […]

What My First WordPress College Class Taught Me

As the last day of class approaches for the world’s first WordPress College Course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, and the next one begins in a couple weeks (filling fast), I’d like to share some lessons my students taught me about WordPress – and teaching. They taught me humility and pride. I stand truly […]

Prove It: It’s Starts With Defining Who You Are

Who are you on the web? How do you describe yourself? What words do you use to tell the world who you are, what you stand for or represent, what you do, how you do it, and why they should want to get to know you and work with you? Preparing to teach my WordPress […]

WordPress Tips: Exploring the WordPress Text Widget

One of the most unappreciated widgets among the WordPress Widget collection is the Text Widget. There are many Widgets that come with WordPress, and many more you can add with Widget WordPress Plugins. The Text Widget is not a WordPress Plugin, it comes with the basic installation of WordPress and WordPress.com. The Text Widget helps […]

Join Us for After Christmas Blues Party in Oregon

The holidays for many are often stuffed with tons of cheer, family, friends, and parties. For my husband and I, most of our life was spent away from family and friends, so we made it a part of our holiday cheer to invite total strangers, orphans, forgotten ones, and the lucky ones to a holiday […]

Help and Tips for Windows Live Spaces Bloggers: Modules, Albums, Widgets, and Lists

I’ve been reading about a lot of the challenges facing Windows Live Spaces bloggers transitioning to WordPress.com. I feel for you all. You’ve done great work on your Windows Live Spaces blogs and now Microsoft is ending the program. Fortunately, instead of just shutting things down, they are giving bloggers six months to change and […]

Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins

In Dallas, August 29, 2010, at OpenCamp I presented “Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins.” Here are the WordPress Plugins and more features during my presentation. Let me first define what my qualifications for a “mind blowing WordPress Plugin” were, as I had to sift through thousands of Plugins and then filter down to include the following […]

WordPress Plugins News: Coffee2Code Plugin Marathon, Plugin Podcast, Plugin Developer Center, Plugin Checklist

As most of you know, I’m extremely passionate about supporting and encouraging WordPress Plugin authors. I’ve written a love letter to WordPress Plugin authors, spent a month writing over 36 posts on nothing but WordPress Plugins, published extensive tips on how to install, configure, and use WordPress Plugins and another guide for finding Plugins, “Where […]

WordPress News on the Blog Herald

The past few weeks of the Blog Herald’s WordPress News reports that I do have been huge. Each one now takes many hours to produce, rounding up all the news from WordPress developers, Plugin and Theme developers, WordPress.com, WordPress fan podcasts and blogs, and the WordPress Community. WordPress 2.7 is the biggest WordPress version ever, […]

Duke DesRochers: Future Social Media Renaissance Man

In this modern world where entertainment has many fronts, movies, network television, cable television, and the web, The Food Network is among many entertainment companies trying to notch it up and take advantage of online social media to find The Next Food Network Star. My cousin, Duke DesRochers, has entered the contest, and as far […]