Evaluating What Makes a Shopping Cart Work Best

Before you check out your next WordPress shopping cart or ecommerce WordPress Plugin, you need to read this. In April 2011, Smashing Magazine published “Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design” in their UX (User Experience) column exploring what they called the “harsh reality” of e-commerce websites. According to recent e-commerce studies, at least 59.8% of […]

Expand Your Writing Abilities: Novel-in-a-Day Project

Last year, Literature and Latte, the creators of the powerful Scrivener writer’s program, shook the writing world with an innovative “Write a book in a day” project. They are doing it again this year. This form post for Novel-in-a-Day 2: The Revenge details the information. The event is Saturday, October 20, 2012, 2100 UK time, […]

What You Most Need to Know About WordPress

At the recent WordCamp Portland 2012, I was asked by several attendees to cover the basics of WordPress and we came up with What You Most Need to Know About WordPress. Here are the “notes” from that unconference presentation. The Difference Between Categories and Tags I hear this question at WordCamps, from readers, students, and […]

WordPress Summer College Course at Clark

The Summer Quarter at Clark College starts in July and now is the time to register for the Introduction to WordPress course, the world’s only full-credit college course on WordPress. There are only 15 slots left, so hurry. The 4 credit class runs Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-8:30PM July 3, August 23 at Clark College […]

201 WordPress Books

As part of my project to bring WordPress into colleges nationally, I did a quick survey of how many books have been published about WordPress. I was asked by several major publishers to publish the first book in English on WordPress but had to decline due to my traveling schedule and work load, so it’s […]

What are the Essential WordPress Plugins You Can’t Live Without?

In my WordPress session at Barcamp Portland this past weekend, one of my favorite questions started the discussion: What are the most essential, must-have WordPress Plugins? My answer? None. Okay, not really. My honest answer is one: Akismet. Spam is the bane of our web experience. It comes in our emails and site comments. While […]

WordPress Stats and Numbers: Breaking Their Own Records

Working on developing a core of WordPress classes for Clark College and preparing for the next “Introduction to WordPress” college course in a couple weeks, I’ve put together some statistics on WordPress you might find helpful – and stunning. WordPress continues to break records set by others, but more often lately, break records set by […]

What My First WordPress College Class Taught Me

As the last day of class approaches for the world’s first WordPress College Course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, and the next one begins in a couple weeks (filling fast), I’d like to share some lessons my students taught me about WordPress – and teaching. They taught me humility and pride. I stand truly […]

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 […]

Campaign 2011: Prove It!

Every year I create a personal campaign. It’s my own personal soap box that I stand on throughout the year to make a point. In the past I tackled copyright issues, freedom of speech, breaking global language barriers on the web, creativity, education, and more. You helped me spread the word and slowly, the world […]

WordPress Credit Course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington

Beginning in January 2012, I will be teaching “Introduction to WordPress,” a four credit class at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. While many schools are beginning to offer WordPress courses, few are offering credit classes and Clark College approached me to make that happen here in the […]

Maria Langer: Celebrating Eight Years Blogging

We make jokes about Renaissance men, but I’d like to introduce you to a Renaissance woman in the truest sense of the reference. Maria Langer is a lot of things, in addition to a dear friend. Even before we were on a first name basis, she was a mentor and inspiration to me. In honor […]

Testers Needed for the Plugin Beta Tester WordPress Plugin

Scott Kingsley Clark of the popular Pods WordPress Plugin and founder of SKC Development, is a leading expert in WordPress Plugins. Like many, he’s been working hard to bring some standards and standardization to WordPress Plugins. Working with Mitcho of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin fame, and the WordPress development team, Scott is revitalizing the […]

Basic Facts and Resources You Need to Know Now About Web Accessibility

Last night I gave a presentation for an amazing group of web designers and developers in Portland, Oregon. I spoke about web accessibility, a long time passion of mine. My co-presenter was Winslow Parker from the Oregon Commission for the Blind who has been teaching screen reading and computer techniques to the blind. He’s also […]

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 […]