Podcast Release WordPress Plugin Helps You Get Permission

Podcast Release WordPress Plugin is a novel use of a WordPress Plugin that helps you blog better and professionally. According to MWGblog’s Michael W. Geoghegan, the Podcast Release WordPress Plugin creates a Podcast Release form. This is a permission form to use your voice and words in a published podcast, on your site. It provides […]

Link Etiquette: You Do Not Need Permission to Link

In an interesting discussion on Split Coast Stampers Forum, the old question of whether or not you need permission to link to someone, in your blogroll or otherwise, has come up. Again, let me make this perfectly clear to everyone. The blog “etiquette” for linking to someone is to link away. You do not need […]

Do You Need Permission to Use Feeds

I recently wrote about asking permission to include a blog in your blogroll and asking permission to link to website or blog content, and now I want to know if you need permission to publish a feed on your blog. This is a complex issue. Like blogrolls, I think it is a compliment to include […]

Do I Need to Ask Permission to Put a Blog in My Blogroll?

I’ve been asked a lot recently about asking permission first to include a blog in a blogroll. I found this an interesting question since it never occurred to me that permission would be required. After all, isn’t inclusion in a blogroll a compliment? What is a Blogroll? A blogroll, sometimes called a “sidebar links list” […]

Do You Need Permission to Link to Someone’s Content?

Shell Holtz writes a great article on “When is a Link Not a Link” that is worth reading if you are worried about fair use of content and link citations of web page content: For years, I’ve been getting the same question when I get to the hyperlink section of my “Writing for the Wired […]

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: 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 […]

WordPress Anniversary: WordPress and Evil

As I look back on the ten years of WordPress, there is a dark side to blogging. While many blamed WordPress for the evil, like guns, WordPress doesn’t cause evil, people cause evil. In fact, WordPress, Automattic, and the WordPress Community has fought longer and harder against the evil doers in the world than most […]

Blog Exercises: Feed Readers

Without the feed reader, my blogging life would be seriously hard work. Feed, commonly misidentified as RSS, is the proper name for the contextual version of your site as distributed through various feed types such as RSS, Atom, XML, etc. They are basically your posts stripped of your website design, read like articles in a […]

Classes and Workshops

The following are classes and workshops offered by Lorelle VanFossen. Writing for the Web June 3 – July 8, 2013 Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am – noon in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. USD $179 This writing class […]

Writing for the Web Course

February 18 – March 25, you will find me teaching “Writing for the Web” for Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education on Mondays from 1:30-4:30PM in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. Come join me! This is the first class of its kind at the […]

Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging

Did you know there is a Blogger’s Code of Conduct? It’s on Wikipedia. Initiated by Tim O’Reilly, it is as follows: Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments. Consider eliminating anonymous comments. Don’t feed the trolls. Take the […]

Banned, Blocked, and Censored Bloggers

According to the American Library Association, September 30 through October 6, 2012, is a salute to Banned Books week. Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together […]