WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

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” […]

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 […]

WordPress Introduction Course in Vancouver, Washington

I will be teaching the WordPress I Introduction course at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education starting Saturdays, April 27 – July 13, 2013, 9am – noon, in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from the Airport at the Columbia Tech Center. What a great way to get to learn about how WordPress works without […]

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: How Many Posts Can Your Audience Handle?

In “Blog Exercises: How Many Posts? the exercise asked you to consider how many posts you should publish within a specific time period on your site, such as by day, week, month, or year. The goal was to set self-deadlines and monitor how many posts you felt were appropriate to publish within that time period. […]

WordPress Course at PCC-Rock Creek in Beaverton

I will be teaching a WordPress Introduction college course at Portland Community College in Beaverton, just west of Portland, Oregon, starting April 3 – June 12, 2013. The course is a hybrid online course meetings Wednesdays from 6-9PM with a minimum of two hours online per week. Called “CMS Website Creation: WordPress,” this 3 credit […]

Introduction to WordPress Class at Clark College Continuing Education

I will be teaching another Introduction to WordPress course at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington, starting Saturdays, April 27 through July 13, 2013. The class will be at the Columbia Tech Center in eastern Vancouver, just across the Columbia River off Interstate 205, just a few minutes from downtown Portland, Oregon. […]

Blog Exercises: What is Your Posting Response Assessment?

A few years ago, the US Air Force created the Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment (PDF), a flow chart that takes their Public Affairs Agency and other agencies involved in web publishing and social media through a step-by-step evaluation of how to respond to comments and interactivity on social media sites. The steps flow […]

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 […]

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: […]

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 […]