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” […]

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 […]

Counting Number of CMS Downloads with beCounted WordPress Plugin

I’m often asked which content management system for web publishing I recommend. While I’m clearly biased towards you-know-what, at last there is a WordPress Plugin that can help you show others which one they should consider. My friends at beAutomated have taken their powerful beCounted WordPress Plugin to new heights with a live stats comparison […]

WordPress.com Maintenance Downtime on Sunday, February 15, 2009

WordPress.com warns that the free blog hosting service will be down for maintenance starting Sunday, February 15, 2009, at 20:00 GMT (noon PST, 3PM EST) for maintenance and upgrade improvements. This should only be a few seconds to a couple minutes. This does not impact full version and self-hosted versions of WordPress. The maintenance probably […]

Blog Herald WordPress News: WordPress Scholarship, 800,000 WordPress 2.7 Downloads, XML-RPC Problem, and Top Plugin Authors

I just published WordPress News: Weblog Tools Collection Scholarship Fund, WordPress at the Supreme Court, Top Plugin Authors, XML-RPC Trouble, and More, this week’s Blog Herald WordPress News report. WordPress 2.7 downloads now passing 800,000. WordPress goes to the Supreme Court. Weblog Tools Collection announces college scholarship fund for WordPress students. WordPress 2.7 problems with […]

500,000 WordPress 2.7 Downloads

December 11, 2008, WordPress 2.7 was announced and released to the public, one of the hottest versions of WordPress ever. Just 20 hours later, Ryan Boren announced that there have been 100,000 downloads in those first few hours, spinning the WordPress Counter. In the next few moments or so, The WordPress Counter rolled over 500,000 […]

Countdown to WordPress 2.7

WordPress.com now features a Countdown to WordPress 2.7 on blogger’s Administration Panels. It is clicking off the time until WordPress 2.7 hits WordPress.com blogs. In the announcement that WordPress 2.7 will arrive on Thursday, December 4, 2008, at 8PM Eastern Time in the United States on WordPress.com blogs, you will find all the tips and […]

What Are Those Unknown Characters in My Blog Comments?

Little squares, boxes, lines, and funky symbols are often found in blog comments. A friend new to blogging called me about these wanting to know if her blog had been hacked or her computer had a virus. “It looks like alien writing from Star Trek!” Those strange symbols and characters in your blog comments are […]

Stripped Down Naked to Honor Web Designers and Developers

In honor of April 9, 2008, as CSS Naked Day, my blog is going naked. I discussed this a few days ago with details on how to strip naked your blog if you would like to join in the celebrations. By going naked, my blog stands with thousands of others who recognize and honor the […]

Strip Down Your Blog: CSS Naked Day

Get ready to go naked. On April 9th, 2008, hundreds, possibly thousands, of blogs and websites will go naked in honor of CSS Naked Day. Join fellow WordPress bloggers in honoring web designers and WordPress Theme builders by going naked. This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design […]

Blog Struggles: Surviving Offline Downtime

I travel a lot as part of my work and there are many times when access to the Internet just isn’t possible. Currently, our temporary residence in Oregon is on a farm over 30 minutes from “civilization”. The farm has satellite Internet, so snow, big storms, freezing fog, power outage, or a glitch in the […]

When Akismet Goes Bad: What to do when Akismet starts spamming your own comments

The reason why I created Akismet Auntie Spam helper script was because I seem to have a problem few other people do — every couple of months Akismet decides that my own comments and trackbacks are spam. This is unforgivable and a fatal usability flaw in Akismet’s design. Comments and trackbacks from the blog admin should skip the spam check process. I challenge anyone who argues differently to have to deal with always having to double check if their own comments are marked as spam. The delay between posting a comment and it appearing in Akismet almost always assures that you will miss one or there will be an inordinate delay in responding to your commenters.

But enough of the ranting about my problems with Akismet. Here are two things you can do to help when Akismet is marking your own comments as spam.

WordPress.com Tip: Get Your Own WordPress.com Email

No, WordPress.com isn’t offering email services – yet. But there is a way you can create an email address that matches your WordPress.com blog. If I’ve commented on your blog recently, have you noticed the email I’m using in the form? lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com If your WordPress.com blog’s title or domain name hasn’t been taken by Gmail, […]

Should You Design Your Own Blog?

A while ago, a popular blogger, asked me to review his blog design for improvements. Just so you know, I do this for a living, and my review isn’t cheap. I gave him my review, pointing out the flaws, misalignments between identity and design, and improvements that would not just help his page ranking but […]

Comment Spammers Never Stop, Even When Your Blog is Down

Just a reminder. If you let your comment spam fighting stop for even a few seconds, comment spammers will get into your blog. As many users are upgrading to the newest version of WordPress, their comment spam fighting guard is down as WordPress Plugins must be deactivated during the upgrade, and sometimes a few glitches […]