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 […]

DuckDuckGo: The Search Engine You Need to Meet

Recently, DuckDuckGo has been turning up in my referrers list. Curious about the name, and thinking it was a spam site, DuckDuckGo needed investigation. Seems I’ve been missing out on what could be the major competition to Google as a search engine. Here is a quick summary of what I learned about DuckDuckGo. It is […]

Searching for Blogs and Blogging Resources on DMOZ-Google Open Directory

While I wasn’t looking, it appears DMOZ, the “largest human-edited directory on the web” is now in the hands of Google. Still, it’s a fascinating place to explore and search for all kinds of information and resources in a directory catalog form rather than just searching. Like a phone book, your search begins by categorized […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Searching and Search Engines

Over the past year, I’ve written a lot about search engines. In many ways, they are the holy grail, the impossible dream, and the unsolved mystery. We are totally dependent upon them. In order to find anything on the web, we must go through a portal of a search engine. It is the epitome of […]

Beauty is Only Skin Deep: Designing Blogs For Feeds, Search Engines and Audience

Crabby Night Owl’s post, “Substance Not Style is King”, caught my attention: About 20% of the hits CNO gets come via the newsfeeds, and I wanted to see what those feeds looked like when they’re read. What I saw was plain, unformatted text, devoid of any style that I may have imparted to it on […]

Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide

Search engine optimization doesn’t cost, but not paying attention to search engine optimization costs you plenty. The following are tips, techniques, and the tools you need to create a search engine friendly website or blog. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the technique of fixing code, writing keywords, and making your site an open door to […]

Top Searches for 2005

It’s that time of year again when the search engines report on the top searched keywords and names for the year. For 2005, I was surprised to find Oh, by the way, Lycos reports that this has been the Pam Anderson Decade with Pamela Anderson leading the top 50 search results with antics in her […]

Upping the Blog Search Ante: Google Blogsearch

In a recent article here, I talked about a Wall Street Journal’s article, “New Search Engines Help Users Find Blogs” highlighting the various tag directories like Technorati which allow users to search for more topical commentaries faster than the major search engines. Well, Google, know for fighting for their market share with a vengence, has […]

Tagging With Emotions Not Common Sense

But since I’ve started using tags in Qumana, I find myself unable to ignore the urge to somehow subvert the intent of these tag things. I want to make people laugh, to surprise them, and so I like to tag posts so that they’ll show up in a way that makes the “finder’s” experience richer […]

Secret Out – How Google Ranks Websites

You might have heard about it this June, but I thought it bore repeating. The secret is out on much of what Google uses to rank your website on their search engine. To read the actual patent information released to the public, see Google’s patent for their search engine ranking technique from 2005 on evaluating […]

WordPress School: Bookmarklets and User Scripts

In the last tutorial in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course covering the web browser, your gateway to the web and WordPress, we covered bookmarks and how to save a web page for later access and reading. In this tutorial, we take bookmarks a little further by exploring browser bookmarklets and user scripts, small but […]

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: Web Browser Shortcuts

In this section of Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course we are exploring the web browser, our gateway to the web, and how it impacts our use of WordPress. In this tutorial you are going to learn some very basic features and functions of the web browser: The Address and Search Bar The Right Click […]

WordPress School: The Article Series

To help me teach you WordPress from the inside out in this free online course, we’ve been focused on creating a five-part article series to learn the various WordPress content features and functionality. Each article offers you the opportunity to dive into how WordPress works right out of the box, focusing on the content and […]

What Does WordPress, iThemes, Goodwill, Home Depot, and Target Have in Common? Your Identity and Security.

We received a new credit card in the mail today to replace our old one AGAIN. An “unsuccessful attempt” to access our secure security data happened and this is a precaution the bank is taking to protect us. I have no other information so I’m left wondering. Yesterday I received an email supposedly from Home […]