Blog Exercises: Feed Readers

Without the feed reader, my blogging life would be seriously hard work. Feed, commonly misidentified as RSS, is the proper name for the contextual version of your site as distributed through various feed types such as RSS, Atom, XML, etc. They are basically your posts stripped of your website design, read like articles in a […]

Blog Exercises: Clean Up Your Most Popular Posts

“It’s dated 2008. It must be useless.” This was the response to an article I tweeted out recently. Yes, the article was dated 2008. Did that mean it wasn’t a valid, timely, and invaluable resource? It was, but that’s not the point. Some people equate old with useless. With the aging population gaining the majority […]

Blog Exercises: Trackbacks

Trackbacks are like an invitation to a party. It is also like legitimate gossip. Trackbacks are notes telling you that someone is talking about you. Trackbacks are part of the important connections that form the true sense of the “web” on the Internet. WordPress and most modern publishing platforms generate trackbacks automatically. As common as […]

Blog Exercises: Weekly Link Roundups

Many bloggers publish weekly or monthly link roundups, highlights of some of the interesting sites they’ve found on the web. Most use a variety of automation techniques to generate this link list, bookmarking the web pages to a bookmarking program that helps them generate this list and release it once a week. It’s a lazy […]

Blog Exercises: Backlinks

Known as incoming links or referrer links, backlinks are links pointing from an external site to your site, directing their readers to you as a resource. Timethief of “one cool site blogging tips” describes backlinks as: Backlinks to your content are like votes for your blog. The more backlinks your blog receives the higher it […]

Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies

No matter what we do or say, there will always be bullies and mean people. Some are mean intentionally, some can hurt unintentionally. And then there are those moments when we read the black letters on the white screen too much in-between the lines and come away feeling sick to your stomach. Welcome to the […]

Blog Exercises: Gravatars

This Blog Exercise will help you update your global recognition on WordPress and all Gravatar-enabled sites. I’m going to let TimeThief of one cool site, a site dedicated to all things WordPress blogging, tips, tools, and tutorials, explain Gravatars in her post, “Gravatars for Global Recognition.” Whether you blog under your real name or under […]

Blog Exercises: Pain Brings Wisdom

You know, the number one thing we want to avoid in life is pain. But at the same time, it’s the number one thing that forces us to grow as human beings. It deepens our ability to feel empathy, turns knowledge into wisdom. And there was enough pain in this situation that I think in […]

Happy Anniversary WordPress: The Beginnings

On August 16, 2005, Lorelle on WordPress became blog ID number 72 on the brand new WordPress.com. The first post was appropriately titled “Lorelle on WordPress” to introduce the site. Looking back, it’s amazing how true to form that I’ve kept the mission of this site all these years later as proposed in the first […]

Happy Birthday and Anniversary, Matt Mullenweg

Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary, Matt Mullenweg. Well, happy early birthday. Matt’s birthday is January 11. Matt Mullenweg is the co-founder of WordPress, the brains behind WordPress.com and Automattic, and I’m honored to call him friend. He also changed my life completely, in more ways than I can count.

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 […]

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 […]

Introduction to WordPress Course at Clark College Continuing Education

Starting October 16, 2012, I’m teaching the Introduction to WordPress at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington. This is the course many of you have been waiting for – affordable and covering the basics you need to know about WordPress. The CTEC 280 Clark College WordPress Introduction course continues as a four […]

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 […]