WordPress School: What’s the Difference Between the Display Posts and Archive Shortcodes

In Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, we’ve been exploring shortcodes. In this tutorial, let’s take a look at two shortcodes that appear to be the same on the surface. WordPress has long had the ability to generate a list of posts in a Page or post with a bit of code in the archives() […]

Blog Challenge: Does Your Blog Make a Difference?

Recently, Liz Strauss of the Successful-Blog posted “I Want to Make a Difference, Too”, a guest post from Jesse Petersen of Gitr’s WoW Blog. In it, he debates within himself and asks others how he can make a difference in the world around him. I want to make a difference. That sentence is a paragraph […]

Blog, Online Magazine, and Ezine: What’s the Difference?

In the Blog Squad’s article, Recipe for an Ezine, the core elements that make a blog or website into a successful ezine, an online magazine, are: We have found ezines that work well for attracting new clients usually have these eight key ingredients: 1. A great name that defines the topic 2. A defined audience […]

Genealogy Blog: What’s the Difference Between a Genealogy Blog and a Normal Blog?

I’ve just started my article series on building a genealogy blog, which includes all aspects of blog building and development, and I wanted to explain the differences and similarities between a normal blog and a genealogy blog. There are many types of blog models. A blog model is not just about the style of writing […]

Bloggers Make a Difference – Taking On The Auto Industry

Think blogging doesn’t make a difference? Sea Coast Online reports “Bloggers Take on the Auto Industry”>Sea Coast Online reports “Bloggers Take on the Auto Industry and are having an impact. As Detroit’s automakers struggle to keep market share and make money, a new breed of watchdogs is emerging, thanks to the Internet. They post regular […]

Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?

Categories and Tags are for your visitors, not just search engines. Think of your visitors’ needs first. Categories and Tags are about navigation and sorting, grouping your content to help visitors find related information. Categories and Tags are not fashion statements. Don’t be colorful or imaginative with either. Categories are your site’s table of contents. […]

Blog Exercises: Blog a Conversation

In this ongoing series called Blog Exercises, today you will blog a conversation. “I don’t want to.” “Sure, you do.” “Nah. Don’t want to.” “This is a chance to improve your blogging.” “Uh-huh.” “This is a change to improve your writing skills.” “Nope.” “You will do it because I said so. Got it?” “Okay.” Writing […]

Blame WordPress For the World’s Problems

Let’s call this person “wise” using air quotes to give you a description of where they come from in life. This “wise” person confronted to me at a public event to announce that WordPress was evil and must be destroyed. “After all,” he informed me soundly. “While WordPress says it supports freedom of speech, it […]

WordPress School: Integrating Policies

In this mini-series on adding policies to your WordPress site for Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, we’re going to look at the technical decisions you need to make on how to integrate these policies. The next follow-up articles will discuss how to write and format each of the four policies we’ll cover in this […]

The Most Common Tiny Mistakes Made When Setting Up a WordPress Site

I’ve just finished five years of teaching non-stop college and community education workshops and programs on WordPress for beginners, novices, experts, web designers, web developers, web programmers, and those who think they know everything but still realize they have a lot to learn. I love that last group as they are willing to learn and […]

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 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: Browser Tabs

In my WordPress college courses, we make it a habit to have a minimum of four tabs open in the web browser before class starts, ready to start jumping into WordPress. I equate this to having my notebook of paper and pen ready to go when my teachers started teaching in school. The three tabs […]

WordPress School: Blavatars

About a month ago in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course you added a Gravatar image to your WordPress.com test site. A Gravatar image and profile is linked to your email address and displays on any WordPress (and many other services) site in the world when you use that email address to comment. Another visual […]

WordPress School: Category Names

In Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course you are to create a test site on WordPress.com or wherever you choose to experiment. It is your WordPress personal sandbox. This doesn’t mean you can do anything you want in the sandbox. The goal of the test site it to emulate a real site, influencing the decisions […]