Blog Exercises: What is the Name of Your Site?

What is the name of your site? In WordPress, every site has a title and a tagline or subtitle. What is yours? Choosing a name for your site can be a challenge and your next Blog Exercise in this year-long series of exercises to help you improve your blog. Sometimes choosing a name for your […]

Using WordPress in Your Domain Name? Don’t!

Update: After many discussions with Matt and the WordPress Community and staff, it is official. It is a violation of trademark to use WordPress in your site’s domain name. You may use it in the title and in blog posts, however, please note that using WP or WordPress in the site title implies the site […]

Google the Brand Name or google the word?

Joanna Tidball pointed me to some news stories on Google attempts to prevent the use of “google” as a generic and general reference for searching the Internet. According to The Independent: In June, Google won a place in the Oxford English Dictionary, while “to google”, with a lower case “g”, was included last month in […]

Genealogy Blog: Choosing a Blog Title and Domain Name and URL

Deciding what your blog name and title should be might be easy for you. If your blog is about cats, then you can call it the “Cat Blog” or “About Cats Blog” and have the domain name/URL (address) be http://www.catblog.com or http://www.aboutcats.com. If your name is Sally Smith, you might want to call it http://www.sallysmith.com […]

A Blog By Any Other Name is Still a Website

I’ve spent some time on this blog discussing the difference between a website and a blog, but I thought I’d tackle it again to help you all understand what this new “blog-thing” is all about and how to tell the difference between a blog and a website. To clear things up and add to the […]

Looking for a Great Domain Name?

Marcus Vorwaller’s How to Find a Great Domain Name is a great find if you are looking for a domain name and you are stumped. He lists a wide variety of resources and tools that will help you find and choose a great domain name. Resources and tools include: Dislexicon JustDropped – expired domain names […]

Domain Name Humor

Okay, I have to admit that the little kid in me snickered at this. Alright, I did more than snicker. Check out Creative Domain Names from Awis/Alexa. I’m not going to show them here, but I do expect a giggle reaction report when you check them out. Know of any other good domain names that […]

Help Name the Next WordPress Version

Ryan and Matt are having a debate. What to call the next version of WordPress. Most of you know it as WordPress 1.6 – subject to change – but they also add a nickname to the versions based upon famous Jazz artists. So far the list has included Miles Davis, Art Blakely, Charles Mingus, and […]

WordPress Template Files and Style Sheets – Give Them a Name

I love the modular template files in WordPress. The ability to mix and match the building blocks to create custom web pages is great. The problem comes when working on the style sheet for the different looks. I often have to track down which style belongs to which template file. Solution? Give them a name? […]

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: Do You Teach or Lecture?

Do you teach or lecture on your site? We all write with a specific “voice” and “style,” representing our perspective on the information we are presenting. On this site, I’m a teacher, sharing with you lessons to help you blog, use WordPress, and publishing on the web. You may share your expertise or your experiences […]

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: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting. In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in […]

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 […]