Blog Exercises: If You Had a Dream Speech

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day out on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the […]

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 […]

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. […]

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: 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 […]

Presentation: Blog Your Passion

The following are the presentations notes for my workshop called “Blogging Your Passion” at Making it in Changing Times in 2015. In 2010 I was in Chicago for SOBCon, the Successful Online Business Conference, and I had an amazing encounter with a woman on the crowded downtown streets: …I was storming away from the last […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Giant Blog Exercise Check List Part 1

July is the midway point of these Blog Exercises and time for a Giant Blog Exercise Checklist to help you keep score of the exercises you’ve done, and what’s left undone. I’ve arranged the blog exercises by similarity, tasks related to each other, rather than chronologically. If you are playing catch up, you might wish […]

Blog Exercises: June Summary

Is June over? How did that happen? Welcome to the end of the first six months of my Blog Exercises, my way of honoring the 10th Anniversary of WordPress by using it as it was meant to be used, by blogging. As it states at the bottom of each post, these blogging exercises are designed […]