Blog Exercises: Define Freedom

In an NPR Radio news story, people submitted their definitions of freedom as related to the recent overthrow or change of government or whatever you wish to call it in Egypt. Two of the definitions caught my attention. Freedom is when you can do whatever you want. Freedom is when you cannot do whatever you […]

Blog Exercises: Stand Up For Freedom of Speech

There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven…baaaad words.” That’s what they told […]

The Freedom in Freedom of Speech

Before and after WordCamp Whistler 2009 in Whistler, BC, Canada, I took advantage of the good graces and lovely home of Glenda Watson Hyatt of Do It Myself Blog (@GlendaWH) and her husband, Darrell Hyatt of Enabling Abilities to Appear in Vancouver, British Columbia. Spending time with Glenda and Darrell is filled with laughter and […]

Michael Crichton – Freedom of Speech vs. Patented Speech

In a very unusual and interesting editorial in the NY Times, Michael Crichton reports that “This Essay Breaks the Law”: Actually, I can’t make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and […]

Just a Reminder About Freedom: Blogging Comes With a Price

It is common knowledge that China has spent billions of dollars on creating the “Great Firewall of China”, known in official circles as the “Golden Shield”. This is essentially the blocking, mostly by keyword, of information the Chinese government feels is “unhealthy” for its citizens. This can range from political dissent to pornography. Within the […]

Freedom of Speech – Bloggers Legal Rights

Bloggers have rights. Did you know that? You do. Bloggers also have limits to those rights and freedoms. The Electronic Frontier Foundation – Bloggers Legal Rights outlines what your rights are and what work is being done to protect them. Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don’t want published. […]

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: Bookmarks

This week on Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course we’ve been covering the web browser, your gateway to the web and WordPress. So far in this Web Browser Guide series we’ve covered some web browser history, keyboard and mouse shortcuts, browser tabs, and search operators and shortcuts to help you find WordPress help as well […]

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: Background Images

A few days ago the tutorial was on changing and setting the header art in your test site. Today’s tutorial in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course is about customizing your site with a background image or color. Before I dive into the details, please note that things are a little confusing right now with […]

Donate

By donating generously to Lorelle on WordPress you are doing more than just saying thank you for many years of ad-free helpful advice to WordPress users and bloggers around the world. You help keep the Lorelle engine running. Even before 2003 when WordPress was born, Lorelle VanFossen helped people have their say on the web […]

Research on the WordPress, Web Development, and Web Design Job Market

In 2012 and 2013, I did extensive research for the grant program to develop and rewrite the Web Developer degree program at Clark College. This research included an analysis of current and future job opportunities for students graduating with that degree with a solid understanding of WordPress. Now that the program has completed its first […]

Code Standards Project to Take WordPress Into the Future

WP Tavern reported recently that WordPress Developers are organizing a community initiative to standardize common post types, taxonomies and meta data. Led by Justin Tadlock, popular WordPress developer and author of Professional WordPress Plugin Development, the goals of the community project are to name these common parts of WordPress to create a more stable and […]

It’s About Access

If you have a few minutes today, watch this. Oh, watch it anyway. And share it. It won a Webby, the equivalent of the Oscar for the web world. And I have to admit that at the end, I cried. Seriously. Like those in the satirical episode, I don’t live in the wildest woolliest of […]

Russia’s Bloggers Under Attack

If you haven’t been paying attention to one of the largest countries in the world is persecuting bloggers. I’ve written up a summary in the ClarkWP Magazine site produced by my Clark College WordPress students, “The New Blogger’s Law in Russia.” In December 2013, the Russian parliament passed a law to allow the blocking of […]