Happy Holidays and Onward!

We survived the Mayan Calendar. We’ve survived planets lining up. We’ve survived attacks on our person, our community, our faith, and our country. Just another year. As we charge forward this coming year, here are some things to look forward to here on Lorelle on WordPress and on my other sites, and many things to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Browser Wars: Internet Explorer Falls, Firefox Tables, and Chrome Soars

Preparing to teach the HTML Fundamentals class at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, this summer, I did a quick bit of research on web browsers to check the current status of the browser marketplace. While not surprised, I was rather taken aback at the downfall of Internet Explorer and fast rise of Chrome. According to […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

WordPress Codex Night Success and PDX Saturday Codex Party

Last night’s PDX WordPress Meetup Group: WordPress Codex Night was a resounding success. In just under two hours, 130 changes were made to the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users. On the informal WordPress Documentation Team Task List, 49 “things to do” were added which will become deleted files and pages, redirects, new […]

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 […]

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 […]

Prove It: What Makes You Trust a Website?

What makes you trust this site? What makes you trust me? What makes you trust any website you visit? What is it about the site that earns your trust? I’ve asked this question at most of the conferences and keynotes I’ve given over the past seven years: What makes you not trust a website? The […]

Creating a WordPress and Blogging New Year’s Resolutions List

Small Biz Trends released “5 Website Resolutions to Put on Your List for 2012,” by my friend, Shashi Bellamkonda, with some great ideas on what needs to be on your New Year’s resolution list for your business this year for building content, web communications, community building, and embracing and integrating technology. I’d like to add […]