Question: What Will You Not Blog About?

In What Will You Not Blog About? on the Blog Herald, I asked readers to tell me what line they will not cross when it comes to blog content. What will you NOT blog about. The responses have been very interesting. A few bloggers take a no-holds-barred approach, blogging on everything and anything they want. […]

Asking a Key Question About Your Blog Brand

Last week, I posted an example from my book, Blogging Tips, What Blogger’s Won’t Tell You About Blogging, called Blog Branding and Identity. Last week, Liz Strauss of Successful and Outstanding Bloggers asked a very important question about blog identity and branding: When you talk to your friends, what do you talk most about? Check […]

Looking for WordPress Support and Help: Ask the Right Questions

Are you new to WordPress.com or WordPress? Need help for your WordPress blog? Sulz guest blogs on Engtech’s blog about how to use the WordPress.com forums, a must read for all WordPress and WordPress.com users. As a volunteer providing free support for WordPress.com in the Support Forums, every now and then it’s hard not to […]

The Question: What Do You Love and Hate About a Website?

BCC News’ Newsnight is having second thoughts on their web design recently and asked a very important question: Web designers should ALWAYS remember: just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done.” Stung by that challenge we’ve resolved to enter a period of rationalization. Let us know what you love and hate, […]

Genealogy Blog: Who, What, Where, and How Questions for the Plan

While traveling recently in a small Class C motor home through Oregon, digging into our family’s history, my mother and I spent a lot of time digging into the who, what, where, how, and everything else we needed to consider to put together our family history and genealogy blog. We ended up with pages and […]

How to Handle Tough Questions (and Comments) from an Audience

20 Answers to the Question: What Does It Take to Blog?

MJ of the Desert Day by Day blog left an interesting comment on my article about women bloggers: I will be 44 tomorrow and have no background in computer or technology of any kind. It is my limited understanding that those bloggers that do(yourself included) orbit in a Internet universe separate from the countless numbers […]

Blogger or Newzblogger? Good Question

Ad Age’s article, “A Blogger is Just a Writer With a Cooler Name”, echoes an earlier post on this site about the differences, and similarities, between writers and bloggers, but sums it up by admitting: And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a […]

Blog Exercises: What Are You Missing?

Frogs redefine my thoughts about amphibians annually. As a child, spring was for tadpoles and summers were for frogs in the swamps, ponds, and ditches around my country ranch in the Pacific Northwest. Moving to Oregon’s Coastal Mountain range west of Portland, my winters are spent driving up the foothills like a crazy person, avoiding […]

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: What Are Your Reasons For Blogging

We all have our reasons for blogging. Having our say, sharing our experience, teaching, learning, creative outlet, money, reputation, because they told you to…all of these are good reasons to blog, but to keep blogging you need something more. In this blog exercise, I want you to consider the more. It is the answer to […]

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 […]