Portals, Splash Pages, Guest Books, Midi Songs, Traffic Counters, and Other Web Duds

Beware the Web Fads of Yesteryear By Sean Carton in Publish is a look back, “not quite lovingly, at portals, splash pages and other Web duds.” And while it’s tempting for developers (and their clients) to want to jump onto the virtual bandwagon of development fads, it’s important to examine what you’re trying to accomplish […]

Firefox Bookmarks Help Bloggers Blog

I love it when a tool I already adore, proves itself to be even better and have more awesome features that I realized. I learn this about WordPress every day, but today I learned something great about Firefox, my Internet browser, that will make my blogging research and work even easier. From a tip from […]

A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users

I get a lot of questions about the tags I use at the bottom of most of my posts. I used to feature two sets of tags, one for Technorati tags and the other as navigation tags to search my site. Up until recently, these were created from a text file I kept open all […]

More Must-Have Bookmarklets Than You Can Swing a Browser At

I’ve seen a lot of links to Special Geek to Live – Ten Must-Have Bookmarklets which lists the top ten must-have bookmarklets to help your online research and browsing. I thought I’d do you better and offer you more must-have javascript bookmarklets than you can swing a bookmarklet at – if you could swing a […]

Reporters Without Borders – Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

As bloggers get more attention and, in many ways, more validity, and more people are blogging, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to help bloggers who blog to express their opinions and change the world around them. Enter the Reporters Without Borders – Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. Bloggers are often […]

Guinness World Book of Records and Other Blog Score Cards

For information on the Guinness World Records, please visit Guinness World Records When I was growing up, the Guinness World Book of Records was one of our most popular toys. We would read through the book and be dazzled by the most mountains climbed, the highest elevation flown, and the greatest weight lifted. We would […]

Blog Exercises: Emergency Drafts

I write my blog posts as far in advance as possible, using the future posts/scheduling feature of WordPress to set my posts to release over time, automating the process of self-publishing on my site and giving me time to live my life rather than be tied to my site. I rely heavily on my Editorial […]

Blog Exercises: What Are You Missing?

Frogs redefine my thoughts about amphibians annually. As a child, spring was for tadpoles and summers were for frogs in the swamps, ponds, and ditches around my country ranch in the Pacific Northwest. Moving to Oregon’s Coastal Mountain range west of Portland, my winters are spent driving up the foothills like a crazy person, avoiding […]

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: May Random Editing Day

May. It’s starting to warm up outside in the north, and growing a bit chilly down under, but it’s that time again. It’s the May Random Editing Day. In this Blog Exercise you will need to edit five random posts from among your thousands – okay, maybe dozens of published articles. What should you look […]

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 […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

Blog Exercises: Stand Up For Freedom of Speech

There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven…baaaad words.” That’s what they told […]

Blog Exercises: The Search for Like Minds

I tat. My 95 year old grandmother-in-law taught me almost 20 years ago. Tatting is 17th century lace making based upon island and coastal women looking for something to do besides fixing fishing nets for the men of the village. They got creative with their netting shuttles to make fine lace doilies, scarfs, edging, table […]

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 […]