Alert: Possibly Related Posts Feature on WordPress.com Blogs

WordPress.com has activated a feature without warning that has many up in arms of protest, making it one of the least welcoming additions to WordPress.com. Since the beginning of WordPress.com, one of the most requested features has been the ability to showcase related posts from our own blogs. WordPress.com has activated this ability, but the […]

Blog Exercises: Sharing Without Context

I got a trackback to one of my posts yeseterday. I was so excited that someone thought what I wrote was worth sharing. Eager to read what they wrote about my article, I paused in my busy schedule to race to their site to find out if I’d changed a life, influenced them in some […]

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: 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 […]

WordPress School: Image Preparation

In the assignment for Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course today and over the weekend, you are to work on preparing images for uploading to WordPress. You will be adding a variety of images to your WordPress test site such as images to accompany your posts and Pages, portraits, images for galleries, design elements, sidebar […]

WordPress School

Are you ready to join Lorelle’s WordPress School? Let’s get going. Here is what you need to know. To participate, you need the following: A free WordPress.com site or other test site for experimentation Join and participate in the WordPress School Google+ Community Do the assignments and tasks associated with each lesson Comment on the […]

Find, Search, Replace, and Delete in the WordPress Database

The following was originally published on WordCast and authored by Lorelle VanFossen. It is reprinted here as a reference guide. You’ve moved your WordPress installation from one server to another. You’ve changed domain names. You’ve moved images around on your server and now they don’t load. You’ve changed your WordPress installation and now images show […]

WordPress For Writers: WordPress Author Sites

In this part of my series on WordPress For Writers, I’ll cover the basic things to consider when using WordPress on site promoting the work of writers and authors. For more on the subject, see other articles in the WordPress for Writers and Authors series. This article assumes you have some basic familiarity with WordPress […]

WordPress For Writers

I will be speaking this year at several workshops and conferences on the subject of “WordPress for Writers.” The workshop covers the basic elements of WordPress content structure and organization, then adds the complexities of a site for writers and authors. This is one of a series of articles on WordPress for Writers and Authors. […]

Blog Exercises: Connecting All the Pieces of Your Site Together

The concept of the World Wide Web is based upon linking, the web of connections that link web pages together like a spider web. There are external links, connecting one site to another, and intrasite links, connecting web pages together within a single site. Today’s blog exercise is focused on the latter, intrasite links. Intrasite […]

Blog Exercises: Protect Your Privacy

The web world thinks my birthday is January 1. Does the web know your birthday? Among the many Blog Exercises so far this year, I’ve mostly focused on your blog. Today, I want to talk about something related to your blog but mostly to your exposure and presence on the web: your private and personal […]

Blog Exercises: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]

The Brute-Force Password Attack on WordPress Sites

My mother emailed me and asked if WordPress was under attack. With all the news of last week’s attack of the Boston Marathon, the attacks on WordPress and other PHP-based web publishing sites was low on the priority list for myself and others, but this is something to take seriously. As we get back to […]

Blog Exercises: Add Industry Events to Your Editorial Calendar

In the blog exercise to create an editorial calendar, I gave you many ideas for setting self-assignments and deadlines for content throughout the year on your blog. Don’t forget to investigate your industry to discover events, conferences, and news to add to the calendar. Whether you go or not, take time to research calendars and […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]