Blog Exercises: The Search for Like Minds

I tat. My 95 year old grandmother-in-law taught me almost 20 years ago. Tatting is 17th century lace making based upon island and coastal women looking for something to do besides fixing fishing nets for the men of the village. They got creative with their netting shuttles to make fine lace doilies, scarfs, edging, table […]

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: How to Respond to a Trackback

In the first blog exercise on trackbacks I explained how trackbacks work and how to respond to trackbacks. It’s time to revisit the concept of how to respond to a trackback. In the exercise, I described the unique quality of trackbacks for tracking conversations across the web. You publish something, someone likes it and publishes […]

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 […]

18+ Things You Can Do on the WordPress Comments Panel

The WordPress development and UI team put a lot of work into WordPress comments. Did you know there are 18 features to a single WordPress comment not counting the comment content itself? Rarely do we stop to consider these powerful features in WordPress, so let’s take time now to understand all the different features and […]

Firefox 5 Crashes: What is Causing Them and How to Fix It

If you are one of the thousands suffering constant crashes from the June update of Mozilla Firefox 5, realize you are not alone. Literally thousands have reported on Firefox 5 crashing across all platforms, including Windows and Mac. UPDATE: The crashes were clearly not a result of problems with Firefox but with Adobe Flash. Crashes […]

WordPress 3.2 Released: Faster, Prettier, Powerful

WordPress 3.2 has been officially released, this time after a fairly short testing time period. To upgrade, use the built-in automatic upgrade. According to the announcement, this is the 15th major release of WordPress. Wow, that just doesn’t seem possible, and yet it also feels like too few. How far WordPress has come since 2003, […]

Social Media for Crafters Ebook Sale Ending

I am so thrilled and honored that hundreds of people have taken advantage of the 99 cent sale for my new book, Social Media for Crafters: Covering the Basics of the Social Web. The sale was only supposed to be for a couple of weeks, but we extended it as the demand was so high. […]

Social Media for Crafters

Social Media for Crafters: Covering the Basics of the Social Web by Lorelle VanFossen (yep, that’s me!), has been a true labor of love, meeting the two joys in my life, blogging and social media with crafting. It is available as a PDF ebook. The book includes the basics of social media designed specifically with […]

New Book Released: Social Media for Crafters

The news is finally out. Yes, I just released a new ebook, Social Media for Crafters: Covering the Basics of the Social Web. It’s for sale in the WordCast Store right now and sells for USD $14.95 but you, too, can get this fantastic pdf ebook for the AMAZING low price of 99 cents during […]

Crafters Wanted for WordCast Craft Blogging Month

It’s like a dream come true. I convinced our editorial team at WordCast to make February “Craft Blogging Month” on WordCast, bringing all types of crafty goodness to you. As a crafter myself, playing with thread, yarn, and fabric as well as wood and whatever I can get my hands on, I’m excited to be […]

Help and Tips for Windows Live Spaces Bloggers: Modules, Albums, Widgets, and Lists

I’ve been reading about a lot of the challenges facing Windows Live Spaces bloggers transitioning to WordPress.com. I feel for you all. You’ve done great work on your Windows Live Spaces blogs and now Microsoft is ending the program. Fortunately, instead of just shutting things down, they are giving bloggers six months to change and […]

Social Web: The Art of Voyeurism

As I’ve been developing my ongoing series on the Blog Herald called “Exploring Social Media,” I’m constantly intrigued and nauseated at the new voyeurism that is sweeping our world and our online social life. It’s freedom of speech and expression meets voyeurism, changing the word-of-mouth gossip world forever. With the recent announcement of a new […]

New P2 Prologue Theme on WordPress.com

P2: The New Prologue is out for WordPress.com bloggers to play with. Based upon the Prologue WordPress Theme that has been called Twitter-Meets-Blog, this is a form of social networking microblogging WordPress Theme. The announcement offers more information and a video, but this is not a WordPress Theme for everyone. It is designed for multiple […]

bbPress News, Tips, and Plugins

Recently, Matt Mullenweg has been fending off questions about bbPress, the popular open source, free forum platform. This past weekend at WordCamp Denver, and last month at WordCamp Las Vegas, audience members begged for an update on the status of bbPress. He joked in Denver that he felt he was being stalked by bbPress fans. […]