Writing on the Web is Like Writing on Paper But The Rules Change

My buddy, Abhijit Nadgouda @ iface has written a fabulous article, “From Paper To Web”, which tackles an issue I’ve dealt with myself and many clients: Going from paper to the web. I don’t want to elaborate on the debates or dos and don’ts, but the technical aspects of a newspaper journalist moving to online […]

The Changing Face of Search Engines: Try Not Searching Google for a Change

Abhijit Nadgouda has written another awesome article, “The Changing Face Of Search Engines”, explaining why you should consider trying a non-Google search engine for a change. Still, lot of quests end in frustration and dissatisfaction, sometimes because of the user’s mistakes or sometimes because the expected information is either never thrown up or are buried […]

Global Awareness May Change The Way You Communicate on the Web

In an interesting twist in forum demeanor, Topic.net’s Blog write about “What Do You Do With Your Online Community When Things Get Hot?” which I found very interesting. The Washington Post recently closed down a message forum after getting 700 heated posts in response to a story about the Abramoff scandal. Last June, the LA […]

Innovative and Simple Web Page Structure – Just Change the CSS

In my articles on Designing a WordPress Theme from Scratch and Designing a WordPress Theme – Building a Sandbox, as well as Choosing a WordPress Theme, I show you how you can choose a structure for your WordPress Theme and then change the look to create a totally new style for your blog or website. […]

30 Things You Can Do to Change the World in 30 Seconds

Part of the reason so many people blog is to help change the world. So I’m starting a new competition. The reward? Convincing people to change the world in 30 seconds or less. The task? I challenge all bloggers to blog about 30 things that can be done to change the world in 30 seconds. […]

Blog Exercise: Inspired by Photography

We are all inspired by photography, a picture that motivates and inspires, that moves us, sometimes to the point of changing our perspective on a subject or on our life. With all of the power found in photography, over the next few weeks I will be offering Blog Exercises with the emphasis on getting you […]

Blog Exercises: Prepare for Summer

It’s Editorial Calender check-in and check up time. May is the shift from spring to summer. From blossoming flowers to green leafed trees casting shade, the weather is changing, bringing warmer days to the northern hemisphere and colder temperatures down under. For those of us living in the Pacific Northwestern United States, we are experiencing […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

Blog Exercises: How Long Are Your Paragraphs?

How long are your paragraphs? Have you measured them lately? One of the telling differences between traditional writing and writing for the web is the length of the paragraph. Look at the example below. Which is easier to read? On the left, the paragraphs are huge, long blocks of text. On the right, the paragraphs […]

Blog Exercises: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]

Blog Exercises: Do You Teach or Lecture?

Do you teach or lecture on your site? We all write with a specific “voice” and “style,” representing our perspective on the information we are presenting. On this site, I’m a teacher, sharing with you lessons to help you blog, use WordPress, and publishing on the web. You may share your expertise or your experiences […]

Blog Exercises: The IKEA Effect for Bloggers

The Ikea Effect was coined by researchers who found out what we all know but rarely admit, we put too much ownership into our own brainchild ideas and concepts. In other words, we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and creations. If you have ever been around kids, you’ve probably had that […]

Blog Exercises: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting. In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in […]

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: Site Policies and Bloggers Code of Ethics

It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]