Exploring the Alignment of the Planets in the Night Sky

In anticipation of the planets alignment, I went digging for some cool Android apps to see the stars, and some awesome astronomy blogs to keep myself updated. Let’s start with the awesome astronomy bloggers. Blogging the Stars When I think about those blogging the stars, I don’t think Perez Hilton. I think about those truly […]

Writing Tips: The Art of the Product Review

The social of shopping continues to delight me as I come to depend more and more on what others say about a product before I hand over my money. Aren’t you? It’s not just purchases. I depend upon the ratings and comments on WordPress Plugins and WordPress Themes. Part of my fascination with social shopping […]

How Many is Too Many WordPress Plugins?

In “How Many WordPress Plugins Should You Install on Your Site?” WPBeginner asks a question I bring up in my workshops, training programs, and college courses: How many WordPress Plugins are too many. The article brings up some valid points worth considering when choosing WordPress Plugins. Are WordPress Plugins a security risk? How would you […]

DuckDuckGo: The Search Engine You Need to Meet

Recently, DuckDuckGo has been turning up in my referrers list. Curious about the name, and thinking it was a spam site, DuckDuckGo needed investigation. Seems I’ve been missing out on what could be the major competition to Google as a search engine. Here is a quick summary of what I learned about DuckDuckGo. It is […]

Blogrolls Gone in WordPress. How to Save Your Links.

For the past few months, rumors were flying that WordPress was going to remove the Links/Blogroll feature of WordPress. As of August 2012, it is now gone from many WordPress.com. MacManx, Happiness Engineer at WordPress.com, recently stated: The Links section was removed from the core WordPress.org software, which means that it will probably be removed […]

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 3.4 Green is Good to Go

WordPress 3.4 is out, named “Green” in honor of jazz guitarist and composer Grant Green. Green is a great nickname for this hot release of WordPress, bringing with it some excellent new features and improvements. As with all WordPress upgrades, it is recommended you backup your full WordPress site, database and all files, before upgrading. […]

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 […]

Prove it! Kym Huynh Bio Reloaded

In my Prove It! campaign article series recently, by request I ripped apart the personal and professional site of Kym Huynh in “Prove It: Kym Huynh Exposed.” Using my advice, he’s updated the two key pages I attacked on his site, the front page and about page, and the results are spectacular. The goals of […]

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 […]

Blogger’s Agreement

In 2005, the The Center for Teaching at the University of Iowa created a collection of PDF files to support their Social Media & Technology in the Classroom teaching resources. Among the well thought out documents on using blogs and podcasts in the classroom and how to incorporate social media is the Bloggers Agreement (PDF). […]

Defying Brute Force Attacks on WordPress Logins

Sucuri, the web security specialists, published “Brute force attacks against WordPress sites,” an in depth look at not just the importance of a strong password but the brute force nature and anatomy of login and registration access attacks. There is a technique known as brute-force attack. Like the name implies, access is gained to your […]

Clark College WordPress Class in the News

Wow! I knew my Introduction to WordPress course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, was getting a lot of attention around the world from those eager to get WordPress into their curriculum, I didn’t realize it would make so much noise so close to home. Check out “Blogging pioneer blazes trail for WordPress at Clark […]

Prove It: Kym Huynh Exposed

After reading Prove It: It’s Starts With Defining Who You Are as part of my Prove It Campaign, one of my best friends volunteered himself for a bio tearing and ripping as he is now involved in several startups that are gaining the attention of investors, which means everything he does online is now subject […]