Blog Exercises: Ingredients of a Well-Designed Site

I was asked by a student in my WordPress class recently what defined a “professional blog,” one that met all the criteria for a well-designed, well-formed site that met web standards. What a marvelous question! We brainstormed all the elements that make up a web standard site, and mixed in personal preferences of the students […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS References and Resources

In “9 Truths That Computer Programmers Know That Most People Don’t” by Macleod Sawyer, he quotes Ben Cherry and adds the following after: “Under the hood, most critical software you use every day (like Mac OS X, or Facebook) contains a terrifying number of hacks and shortcuts that happen to barely fit together into a […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS – Identifying IDs and Classes

As we round up the mini-series on HTML and CSS basics as part of the ongoing Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, and to prepare you for working with WordPress Themes, it is important to understand how to find the right design element to change on a website, specifically within a WordPress Theme. We’ve been […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS Positioning

In Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course we’ve been exploring HTML and CSS basics to help you prepare for working with WordPress Themes coming soon. The information in these tutorials is essential for the WordPress user to learn for the most simple of tasks, from controlling how content displays in your posts to adding HTML […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS Parent-Child Relationship

So far in this mini-series on HTML and CSS for Lorelle’s WordPress School, we’ve covered the basics and gave you a test HTML file to experiment with, explored the basics of HTML tags, inline styles with CSS, HTML embedded styles where the styles are removed from the HTML and placed in a <style> HTML tag […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS Embedded Styles

In the next part of this mini-series for Lorelle’s WordPress School, we’re moving deeper into understanding how CSS works with HTML. These easy tutorials will give you the basic tools you need to learn to customize your WordPress site and work on WordPress Themes. We will be working more on the test HTML file and […]

WordPress School: HTML Inline Styles

In this mini-series for Lorelle’s WordPress School , we’re learning about HTML basics. I shared a little history and information to help you get started and gave you an HTML file that you will use in this tutorial. In the next tutorial, I covered some very basic HTML elements found in the test HTML file. […]

WordPress School: HTML Tags

The last lesson was the HTML and CSS Tutorial, another mini-series on Lorelle’s WordPress School. This is a very basic tutorial on HTML and CSS to prepare you for WordPress site customization and WordPress Themes. This tutorial in the series will help you understand the basics of an HTML tag, the architectural code wrapped around […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS Tutorial

Over the past week we’ve been learning about the web browser, your gateway to WordPress and the web. This was a precursor to the next mini-series of tutorials in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course. We are going to learn HTML and CSS. Learning WordPress from the inside out means learning the basic fundamentals of […]

Go Naked: CSS Naked Day April 9

In 2006, the First Annual CSS Naked Day was held, a tribute to honor web designers, the painters of our websites. I celebrate the holiday most years on this site. Every year on April 9, web developers, designers, and those honoring web design and programming celebrate by removing the styles on our sites for 24 […]

WordPress School: Web Browsers

Do you realize we spend more time talking about the web then understanding how the main tool we use to access the web works? I think we take the web browser for granted. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to watch all those YouTube videos. You wouldn’t be able to let the world know what […]

WordPress School: How to View a Web Page Source Code

Starting this Monday, we will be diving into web browsers in preparation for some basic HTML lessons to help you learn more about the inner workings of WordPress, WordPress Themes, and web design as part of Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course. The first step in the process is learning to view a web page […]

WordPress School: Call-to-Action Graphic Images

In this mini-series of lessons on creating images for your WordPress site, we’ve covered the basics, experimented with two ways of creating header art from scratch and with text overlaying a photograph, and learned how to put text on images for quotes and other purposes. Today’s image lesson in this series is about creating a […]

WordPress School: Header Art Images

In the first article in this mini-series on learning how to create images for WordPress header art, call-to-action images, and add text to images for your site’s design elements, I covered the basic tools and materials you will need for these tutorials. In this tutorial, you will learn simple basics for header art, specifically how […]

WordPress School: Image Lessons

I’m often asked by students in the college degree programs of web development and web design how much familiarity and expertise do they need with images. “Do I need to learn PhotoShop and Illustrator?” The truth? You need to know more about images and graphic design than you would ever imagine. Web design and development […]