Speed Blogging Tips and Techniques

The following are the workshop notes for my popular workshop on “Speed Blogging.” The workshop is designed to teach how to take charge of your website and keep the content flowing with enthusiasm over the long term by learning the shortcuts, tips, and techniques to speed up the process of blogging, allowing your blog to […]

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: Taking Inventory on What Keeps You Blogging

The recent major desktop computer crash has left me reeling. I thought I had all my data backed up. For the most part, I did. What I didn’t have backed up was my programs. Getting back up to speed fast, I’ve had to prioritize the programs I had download and install. Yes, download. Who gets […]

Blog Exercises: Start Here Guides

Training for educators using online learning management systems for high schools and college recommend creating a “Start Here” page to guide the student through the process. If the process is complicated, this makes sense. The question I wanted to know from trainers is why don’t they provide training upon entrance to the school so each […]

Blog Exercises: August Summary

August is done, and so is the summer for most of the world north of the equator. Summer is on its way down under. This is the end of eight months of celebrating the 10th Anniversary of WordPress with a year of non-stop blogging about blogging, focused on using WordPress as your publishing platform. In […]

Blog Exercises: The Secret Sauce

In “Letters to Laurali” on Laurali Star Diaries, author Larauli responded to her first “letter to the editor” on her site. The request was from a fellow blogger asking for help blogging. Blogging has changed her, she admits. Laurali has soared, stretching her wings with glory and radiating in the new connections she is building […]

Blog Exercises: The Outsider

During a writer’s convention this weekend, someone familiar with my site and these Blog Exercises asked me why I was handing our all this information to help others blog better, use WordPress better, and migrate their site from personal to professional. I had a pat answer then, but today, I have another. …Assumptions like these […]

Blog Exercises: If You Don’t Make Mistakes, You’ll Never Learn

I’ve long believed that if you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning. That philosophy is part of what these blog exercises are about. I want you to stumble. I want you to destroy your site. I want you to make a mess of everything because that is how you learn. How did I learn what […]

Blog Exercises: Organize Your Content – The Sequel

In the previous blog exercise, “Blog Exercises: Organize Your Content,” you were to create a giant lists of all the posts you have published in a link list organized by topic. If you have been blogging for a while, that exercise may have taken some time and work. If you’ve been blogging a short time, […]

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: 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: A Few of My Favorite Things

Like the song says, “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…these are a few of my favorite things.” In this blog exercise, you challenge is to write a “favorite things” post. We all have favorite things. For a reader, it is one or more books, a series, or an author. For a knitter, it could […]

Nelson Mandela Tribute

In January 2011, Nelson Mandela became a trending topic on Twitter as false rumors of his death circulated the world. He was 92 at the time and this was one in a long string of stories shaking the world’s confidence in his survival. Today, at age 94, those rumors seem more prophetic as the world […]

Blog Exercises: Current Events for June

Been watching the news lately? It’s time to blog the news and current events for June in our Blog Exercises. For those living on the top of the world, summer is here. For those living down under, the cold is here. There are droughts and floods everywhere, part of the normal fluctuation of the seasons […]

Blog Exercises: Awesome by Association

In “Two WordPress.com Experts and One Series of Blog Work,” Kinna Reads featured myself and my friend, timethief of one cool site (lowercase intentional). I’m honored and grateful, but more importantly, I’m awesome by association. My friend, timethief, started blogging in 2005. When she switched to WordPress.com, her life changed as did mine and hundreds […]