What Are Those Unknown Characters in My Blog Comments?

Little squares, boxes, lines, and funky symbols are often found in blog comments. A friend new to blogging called me about these wanting to know if her blog had been hacked or her computer had a virus. “It looks like alien writing from Star Trek!” Those strange symbols and characters in your blog comments are […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

WordPress Anniversary: WordPress and Evil

As I look back on the ten years of WordPress, there is a dark side to blogging. While many blamed WordPress for the evil, like guns, WordPress doesn’t cause evil, people cause evil. In fact, WordPress, Automattic, and the WordPress Community has fought longer and harder against the evil doers in the world than most […]

Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes

In “Copyright: How to Quote and Cite Sources,” I explain all the details you need to know about how to quote and cite other sources. Let’s review for this Blog Exercise. According to International Copyright Law, you are allowed to quote from original sources without violating copyright law if you copy content in accordance with […]

Blog Exercises: Honor the Past with Anniversaries and Birthdays

Every year I celebrate January 11, the birthday of WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg. The first week in April, I celebrate CSS Naked Day, a day to turn off the CSS designs on your websites world-wide to pay tribute to web designers. Later in April is the Day of Blog Silence, honoring the victims of violence […]

Prove It: Defining Your Avenues of and Communication Marketing

A news story came out today that specifically served a client of mine. It was a national news story that could help them support their current clients with helpful information, and help convert potential clients with persuasive, current event information. Unfortunately, this client has been adamant against blogs, interactive websites, and social media. In my […]

Happy Birthday, Matt Mullenweg

As I prepared my annual public “Happy Birthday, Matt” post for Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress (with a lot of other amazing people), I spotted the birthday greeting by Jane Wells of the WordPress Foundation. She thanks Matt for all the ways her life has been changed since meeting him, a perfect way to say […]

Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins

In Dallas, August 29, 2010, at OpenCamp I presented “Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins.” Here are the WordPress Plugins and more features during my presentation. Let me first define what my qualifications for a “mind blowing WordPress Plugin” were, as I had to sift through thousands of Plugins and then filter down to include the following […]

Blog Struggles: SOBCon, Idea Whelmed, and Tell It To the Telephone Pole

A few people were concerned when I started my first Blog Struggles Diary recommending that I not blog every day thus changing the whole tone of my site. This confused me as I thought this was what my site was about. I had to take some time to think about that…then life and work interfered, […]

Blog Struggles: How Do You Know When to Stop Writing a Blog Post?

As I prepare for my meeting with Alan Dean Foster, one of the world’s most prolific and famous science fiction authors, I’m not the only one inspired by the whole concept of making dreams come true. Robyn Seaton introduced Alan Dean Foster to me after she and I met at WordCamp Phoenix, and PodCamp Arizona […]

Lessons from LTPact 2008: Cloud Servers and Gambling

I spent the past few days in Las Vegas for the Layered Tech LTPact 2008 Conference, an event sponsored by Layered Tech, the second largest web hosting and reseller in the world, among WordPress luminaries and experts and a lot of server geeks and serious online business folks. I got a chance to spend time […]

Blog Struggles: Blogger’s Depression

It happens to everyone, including bloggers. You work and work, filled with enthusiasm, eager to embrace each day. Then something happens. For a blogger, it’s little things. A mistake found in a post months after publishing. You are embarrassed but no big deal. Then someone says something a bit sarcastic towards you, and not your […]

WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk

The following are my tips and recommendations to help you get the most out of WordPress, be it on WordPress.com or the full version of WordPress as presented to hundreds of WordPress fans at WordCamp Israel (English) recently. This is a fleshed-out version of my program notes outline, with links to more tips and recommendations […]

Blog Challenge: Blog About Something You Know Nothing About

While this might be easy for some, it will be a real challenge for others. Your blog challenge this week is: To blog about something you know nothing about. Not just anything, but something you really know nothing about. It doesn’t have to be interesting to you, since you know nothing about it or never […]

Customizing Your WordPress Theme Footer

UPDATE: WordPress now has custom menus. At the bottom of the article, I explain how to customize your WordPress Theme’s footer using Custom Menus. Yesterday, I covered the basic code found in the footer of the WordPress Default Theme, and gave you some ideas on how to add some impact and navigation to your WordPress […]