Blog Exercises: Update Your Author Description

Who are you? What do you do? How do you let the world know who you are on your blog? We’ll dig into your About Page later. For now, this blog exercise is dedicated to updating your profile on your site. In my popular series, “Managing Multiple Bloggers in WordPress,” I covered more than you […]

Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes

In “Copyright: How to Quote and Cite Sources,” I explain all the details you need to know about how to quote and cite other sources. Let’s review for this Blog Exercise. According to International Copyright Law, you are allowed to quote from original sources without violating copyright law if you copy content in accordance with […]

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: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About

In 2006, I spent three months thrashing, not sleeping at night, agonizing over what I had written and desired to publish. I knew it would be received with resistance at the least, revenge at the worst. I had already tested the waters and found out that the subject could get me in very hot water […]

Blog Exercises: Current Events January

Every month in this series of Blog Exercises I will ask you to check the news and report on something in the news that relates to you and/or your site’s purpose. It may directly relate or indirectly. Fascinated with the alignment of the planets, I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the ease of watching […]

Classes and Workshops

The following are classes and workshops offered by Lorelle VanFossen. Writing for the Web June 3 – July 8, 2013 Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am – noon in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. USD $179 This writing class […]

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 […]

Writing for the Web Course

February 18 – March 25, you will find me teaching “Writing for the Web” for Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education on Mondays from 1:30-4:30PM in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. Come join me! This is the first class of its kind at the […]

Blog Exercises: The Content Project Form

In these year-long Blog Exercises dealing with editorial or content calendars, we’re working on exploring all the dates you can add to your calendar, including adding seasonal post content and other date-sensitive blog posts and articles. In this exercise, we’re going to create a content project form. The goal of a content project form is […]

Blog Exercises: Define Your Target Audience

The phrase “target audience” is an advertising and marketing phrase designed to help you aim your content at a specific group of people. Do you know your target audience? As a crafter, you may offer a wide range of craft ideas and projects, so your audience might be all crafters and do-it-yourself folks. If you […]

Blog Exercises: Check Your Dates

It’s 2013. Time to update your calendars and your blog dates. Sara Tetreault of Go Gingham asked me to cover updating copyright dates on your blog, so this Blog Exercise is dedicated to that and all the dates that need changing on your site now that we are into a new year. Most WordPress Themes […]

Blog Exercises: The Editorial Calendar

Throughout these Blog Exercises you will be building your own editorial calendar, a schedule for content. Consider these as blog planners and self-deadlines. There are many calendar types, traditional and electronic. I recommend starting simple by printing out a 12-18 month calendar, one month per page, right from a free template in your word processing […]

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 […]