Shopping for a Blogging, Traveling Laptop

My laptop has reached the four year birthday and I’m ready for a new one. Every computer and laptop I’ve owned I’ve pushed beyond it’s capabilities from day one. I will never forget the first computer my husband and I bought “together”. Within three days, I’d filled the 2 gig hard drive, the largest one […]

Blog Challenge: Write a Travel Post

I travel pretty much full-time, living on the road, sleeping in motor homes, trailers, tents, hotels, and other odd places. I started traveling extensively when I was a teenager, turning it into a full-time life in 1996. I have lots of travel stories I share on Taking Your Camera on the Road, and this week, […]

Blogging Challenge: Travel Blog – Adventure in Your Back Yard

Your Blogging Challenge this week is to take a high adventure. To fill up water bottles, and pack your backpack full of film, digital cards, batteries, note pads, pens and pencils, snacks, digital recorders, and your camera, and head off into the wilds of your back yard. That’s right. You are off on a travel […]

Computers and Discount Travel and Christmas Shopping, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I’m barely home from a mad dash cross country trip driving across the United States from Seattle back to Alabama in a small motor home, and I have to turn around and fly back to Seattle next week, so I’m busy rushing about doing last minute holiday shopping and cleaning up. In the middle of […]

Google Tackles Travel Search

Google is expanding into various search and media products left and right with a vengence. Some will succeed, and succeed big, but others will fall by the wayside, but their willingness to try everything is part of the fun, and part of the risk. Inside Google reports that Google is now linking to travel search […]

Blog Exercises: Which Stats Matter

In this ongoing series called Blog Exercises, let’s explore the stats that matter, the ones you should be paying attention to on your site and off. On your site, you should be paying attention to: Most Popular Posts: Are your most popular posts related by topic? If so, there is clearly a driving interest in […]

WordPress School: Shortcodes

WordPress shortcodes are abbreviated code placed into the WordPress Visual or Text Editors that expands into a larger code structure. As we continue with Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, it’s time to explore the basics of WordPress shortcodes. The following is the embed code for a Google Map, pointing to one of my favorite […]

Blog Exercises: Unfinished Business

In this ongoing series called Blog Exercises, let’s tackle your UFOs. In quilting and sewing, UFO stands for Unfinished Objects. We all have them, in our work, our personal lives, and on our blog. Do you have a to do list hanging around your desk or locked in your phone regarding your blog? It’s time […]

Blogging Tools: DownThemAll Browser Add-on

DownThemAll! Firefox Extension is another tool for your blogging toolbox. As a reminder, most power bloggers use Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Not just because they are “better” in the terms of meeting web standards, but also because of their powerful extendable features. Browser extensions, add-ons, or plugins allow you to extend the features and […]

Blog Exercises: Define Your Community

In this Blog Exercise, it is time to start building a community around your blog. If you have one, it’s time to re-evaluate it to ensure you keep it. We will start with defining your community. Your blog topic should give you a clear indication about demographics of your online community, but it might not […]

The Most Common Tiny Mistakes Made When Setting Up a WordPress Site

I’ve just finished five years of teaching non-stop college and community education workshops and programs on WordPress for beginners, novices, experts, web designers, web developers, web programmers, and those who think they know everything but still realize they have a lot to learn. I love that last group as they are willing to learn and […]

WordPress Basics Half Day Workshop at Newspace Photography Center, Portland

Saturday, September 12, 2015, I will be teaching “Building a Website with WordPress” at the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon, from noon to 5PM. I know most of you in the Portland area will be heading to OMSI for the Maker’s Fair, but do that in the morning and spend the afternoon with […]

WordPress School: Browser Tabs

In my WordPress college courses, we make it a habit to have a minimum of four tabs open in the web browser before class starts, ready to start jumping into WordPress. I equate this to having my notebook of paper and pen ready to go when my teachers started teaching in school. The three tabs […]

WordPress School: Image Lessons

I’m often asked by students in the college degree programs of web development and web design how much familiarity and expertise do they need with images. “Do I need to learn PhotoShop and Illustrator?” The truth? You need to know more about images and graphic design than you would ever imagine. Web design and development […]

WordPress School: Google Maps

We’ve experimented with image and video embeds in your test site in Lorelle’s WordPress School. We’ve also worked a with WordPress shortcodes in the contact form on the Contact Page, and you’ve gotten a little HTML awareness within your site’s content. Today’s assignment is another form of embed. Today, we are going to embed a […]