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 […]

Banned, Blocked, and Censored Bloggers

According to the American Library Association, September 30 through October 6, 2012, is a salute to Banned Books week. Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together […]

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 […]

Business of Blogging: Purpose, Customers, and Content

Originally published in Blogger and Podcaster Magazine. I write for a variety of magazines and publications online and off. Blogger and Podcaster has graciously allowed me to republish my articles. When blogging began, many of us started blogging for fun. Blogging is fun. It’s a great way to express yourself, to meet and greet people, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Prove It: It’s Starts With Defining Who You Are

Who are you on the web? How do you describe yourself? What words do you use to tell the world who you are, what you stand for or represent, what you do, how you do it, and why they should want to get to know you and work with you? Preparing to teach my WordPress […]

The Most Powerful Life Changing Conference Event, SOBCon, Comes to the Pacific Northwest

I’ve been tortured the past few weeks on how to convince you that attending SOBConNW 2011 on September 16-18, 2011, will change your life. As usual, when it comes to my favorite annual conference, I find myself wordless. It’s that profound. If the SOBConNW Program and descriptions at the SOBCon site doesn’t convince you, maybe […]

Security and Protection: Understand the Social in a Crime Network and How to Protect Yourself

While the following is a bit off-topic, my head is spinning with all the layers and networks I’ve uncovered within this recent experience. A friend of mine called this a combination assembly line meets Wikipedia of crime social networks. It begins with my car being broken into and my purse stolen a few months ago, […]

Managing Multiple Authors: Customizing the Author Bio Box

In this series on managing multiple bloggers in WordPress, I’ve covered how to showcase the authors within the WordPress Theme design, talked about how to manage author content within WordPress to help you see all the ways you can promote your authors within the design and content management system, and started showing you code and […]

Managing Multiple Authors: Customizing the WordPress Author Page

We’ve been covering a lot of different suggestions for increasing the exposure of a contributor in a multiple author blog, and in this article, I want to focus specifically on one of the most important page on a WordPress site to an author, the author page. The author page in WordPress is generated automatically, featuring […]

Managing Multiple Authors: Showcasing the Authors

I’m speaking at WebVisions on “Managing Multiple Bloggers in WordPress” on Thursday, May 26, 2011, at 11:30AM in Portland, Oregon. The following is part of a series of articles on the topic and notes from my presentation. Growing up with print media, my family couldn’t get enough of Gary Larson’s The Far Side cartoon strip […]