WordPress School: Adding Policies

It’s time to talk about policies in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course. While every website, personal or professional, requires some policies, learning how to publish policies on a WordPress site involves learning about WordPress Pages as a content type, customizing the navigation menu, using jump links, creating lists, customizing links in Widgets, and a […]

WordPress School: Text Editors

Coming very soon, I’m dedicating a couple weeks to learning about web browsers and HTML and CSS in preparation for moving into the site design and customization aspects of Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course. To help you prepare, today’s tutorial and assignment is to introduce you to text editors. In WordPress, there is a […]

WordPress School: Blockquotes

No matter what you do on the web, you will quote or cite someone, some place, or something. In today’s assignment and tutorial in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, I’m going to teach you how to quote and cite in WordPress, and save yourself from a copyright violation. By publishing content on your site, […]

WordPress School: All the HTML You Need to Know

In my WordPress community class the other night, we had 15 minutes left when I told the class I was about to teach them how to speak HTML before class ended – well, enough HTML to publish in WordPress. They didn’t believe it. Believe it. It took about 6 minutes. I hope to do the […]

WordPress School: Paragraphs and Line Breaks

The previous assignment in Lorelle’s WordPress School covered the visual and text editors in WordPress. In this assignment, I’d like to focus on making paragraphs within both editors. A paragraph in HTML is a container holding contextual content, the written word. The HTML of a paragraph opens and closes with the paragraph tag. If we […]

WordPress School: Headings

Many people will tell you that the images you use in a published post are the most important visual elements on a web page. Don’t believe them. It is an HTML content tag that is often overlooked that is the most powerful visual element on a web page: the heading. At this point in Lorelle’s […]

WordPress School: The Second Post

Last week in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course you were to create your first post on your test site, the first in an article series to help you learn about how to publish posts in WordPress and start of the section in this course on “What Can You Put Into WordPress.” This assignment is […]

WordPress School: About Page

Now that we’ve covered the basics of posts and Pages, it’s time to cull from the information in your Site Master Plan to create your first page: About. By default, WordPress automatically generates an About Page called “About.” Some web hosting services have chosen to rename this “Sample Page” or “Example Page” for their one-click […]

WordPress School: Posts and Pages

Let’s be Lorelle’s WordPress School with the two core content elements of WordPress: posts and Pages. By default, WordPress displays content in posts and Pages. Each behaves differently and distinctively in WordPress, and can confuse people easily. Let’s make this simple. Pages hold timeless content. Posts hold timely content. Please be patient with the videos. […]

Blog Exercises: Why We Dig

In the October issue of The Christian Science Monitor, I found this from John Yemma, Monitor Editor: Why we dig, and what we may find Sometimes a portal opens into the world of legend. A stone is rolled away from an Egyptian tomb revealing a 3,300 year old Pharaoh’s power and wealth. A Roman city […]

Blog Exercises: I Don’t Trust That Site

I recommended an article to a student and they said they didn’t trust that site, thus shed doubt on my personal integrity. I asked why. “Because it’s on Blogspot.” Wow. I have to say that wasn’t the answer I expected. I didn’t expect someone, not web savvy in the least, would associate a blogger on […]

Blog Exercises: Why Oh Why Ask Why?

Why? Why ask why? Because it is there. Why is probably the first question out of many children’s mouths. Why does it do that? Why do you do that? Why is it that color? Why does it make that noise? Why, oh, why, oh, why? Why say why? Because it is there. We want to […]

Blog Exercises: If You Wouldn’t Do It In Public, Would You Do It Online?

If you wouldn’t do it in public, would you do it online? Unfortunately for many, the answer is a resounding YES! However, most of us have some…whatever you call it…oh, yeah, class, ethics, moral fiber, manners – etiquette. I’m not the Dear Abby of social norms, but I’m first in line to tell you that […]

Blog Exercises: When You Assume…

One of the class projects for my WordPress college course involved the students working together on a single broken post to find all the errors in the content. Typically, this is a quick test of their basic coding skills, but this quarter’s students are not typical. They are exceptional. The goal was to identify and […]

Blog Exercises: Intentional Blogging

One of the things I work with in teaching writing for the web and blogging is to blog intentionally. I call it “content with intent.” Content with Intent From the very first of these Blog Exercises I’ve preached content with intent, blogging with every intention filled with purpose, goals, and incentive. Specifically self-incentive, a self-motivated […]