Writing Tips: The Art of the Product Review

The social of shopping continues to delight me as I come to depend more and more on what others say about a product before I hand over my money. Aren’t you? It’s not just purchases. I depend upon the ratings and comments on WordPress Plugins and WordPress Themes. Part of my fascination with social shopping […]

The Wonderful World of WordPress Products

By now, most of you should know that there are three versions of WordPress available and one awesome forum software program, bbPress, which works seamlessly integrated with two versions of WordPress. Let’s look at your WordPress options and see which one is right for your blogging needs. WordPress.com WordPress.com is the free but limited version […]

WordPress.com Makes PCWorld’s Best 100 Products of the Year

Wow. This is a week for news. PC World’s list of the “The 100 Best Products of the Year 2006″ lists WordPress.com as 95 out of 100 of the Best Products of the Year. It doesn’t say much but here it is: 95. WordPress Blogging Tool (free) Two practical controls make this product stand out: […]

Being a More Productive Blogger

To Done’s article on “Be a More Productive Blogger” offers some interesting tips on how to increase your blogging production. In other words, how to streamline the process and tips to be more efficient. The thing is, I go to great lengths to keep my sites up-to-date, interesting and moving forward. My off-the-cuff answer is […]

Blog Exercises: The IKEA Effect for Bloggers

The Ikea Effect was coined by researchers who found out what we all know but rarely admit, we put too much ownership into our own brainchild ideas and concepts. In other words, we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and creations. If you have ever been around kids, you’ve probably had that […]

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 […]

Blog Exercises: Post-Op Care Content

I recently had some minor surgery and received an extensive list of post-operative care instructions. I was amazed at the in depth detail they went into, so I asked about it. The practitioner told me that they spent a year collecting all the questions people had about each surgery and treatment and created a paper […]

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. […]

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 […]

Happy Holidays and Onward!

We survived the Mayan Calendar. We’ve survived planets lining up. We’ve survived attacks on our person, our community, our faith, and our country. Just another year. As we charge forward this coming year, here are some things to look forward to here on Lorelle on WordPress and on my other sites, and many things to […]

A Day of Healing and Suffering at the Clackamas Mall

“I feel greedy.” We stood in the cold outside the Clackamas Mall, arms wrapped around each other, watching the crowd expand to release individuals and couples to step forward and place their candles on the memorial stage. The faces of the two deceased smiled over the mournful group gathered before them. The photographs were snapshots […]

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 […]

Evaluating What Makes a Shopping Cart Work Best

Before you check out your next WordPress shopping cart or ecommerce WordPress Plugin, you need to read this. In April 2011, Smashing Magazine published “Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design” in their UX (User Experience) column exploring what they called the “harsh reality” of e-commerce websites. According to recent e-commerce studies, at least 59.8% of […]

Expand Your Writing Abilities: Novel-in-a-Day Project

Last year, Literature and Latte, the creators of the powerful Scrivener writer’s program, shook the writing world with an innovative “Write a book in a day” project. They are doing it again this year. This form post for Novel-in-a-Day 2: The Revenge details the information. The event is Saturday, October 20, 2012, 2100 UK time, […]