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 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 […]

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 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 […]

WordPress School: All the HTML You Need to Know

In my WordPress community class the other night, we had 15 minutes left when I told the class I was about to teach them how to speak HTML before class ended – well, enough HTML to publish in WordPress. They didn’t believe it. Believe it. It took about 6 minutes. I hope to do the […]

WordPress School: Site Master Plan

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. Tony Robbins A website is an intangible, a virtual nothing in which we create something tangible to human perception. When it boils right down to it, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created nothing with WordPress. WordPress isn’t a physical object you can […]

Presentation: Blog Your Passion

The following are the presentations notes for my workshop called “Blogging Your Passion” at Making it in Changing Times in 2015. In 2010 I was in Chicago for SOBCon, the Successful Online Business Conference, and I had an amazing encounter with a woman on the crowded downtown streets: …I was storming away from the last […]

Research on the WordPress, Web Development, and Web Design Job Market

In 2012 and 2013, I did extensive research for the grant program to develop and rewrite the Web Developer degree program at Clark College. This research included an analysis of current and future job opportunities for students graduating with that degree with a solid understanding of WordPress. Now that the program has completed its first […]

Two WordPress College Classes Offered at Clark College This Fall

The WordPress I CTEC 160 courses at Clark College are about to close and there are still seats open in the Monday/Wednesday classes. This fall there are two times to choose from. Days from 1-3:30PM and evenings from 6:30-9PM. The 5-credit course covers the basics of WordPress, from content to design. Much of the classwork […]

It’s About Access

If you have a few minutes today, watch this. Oh, watch it anyway. And share it. It won a Webby, the equivalent of the Oscar for the web world. And I have to admit that at the end, I cried. Seriously. Like those in the satirical episode, I don’t live in the wildest woolliest of […]

Blog Exercises: Where You Came From

Inspired by these blog exercises, Janet Williams of Janet’s Notebook has been taking her readers on a journey back through time and space, exploring her family’s Chinese heritage from her little corner of the south of England. Her “Letters from China” have evolved from a few posts to an entire series, and eventually, I hope, […]

Annual Thanksgiving Orphan Party

You’re invited to the VanFossen Annual Thanksgiving Orphan Party Saturday, November 30, 2013 For many years we’ve gathered together anyone missing home, left out of Thanksgiving celebrations, or eager for more social during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. You are invited to join the craziness. It starts around 2PM. We eat about 6PM, if things go […]

Blog Exercises: Life Lessons

We all have life lessons, lessons from a life well-lived and experienced, we carry with us. Some we learn on our own, and others are taught to us by others. In “Lessons Learned from Dahni, The Eyeless Wonder Cat” I shared some powerful life lessons taught to me by this little blind cat who was […]

Blog Exercises: Site Goals

Early on in these Blog Exercises I asked you to clarify what you do and how you share your purpose on your site, what your target audience is, and review the why of why you blog and self-publish on the web. Hopefully you’ve had time over the past few months to digest those thoughts, evaluate […]