WordPress School: Terms – Administration Screens

One of the greatest challenges I have in teaching WordPress to clients, students, and in workshops and online courses like Lorelle’s WordPress School is the fact that WordPress keeps changing the interface and the names of the various interface bits and pieces. They are doing it again on WordPress.com with a “new and improved” interface […]

WordPress School: Terms – WordPress

Throughout Lorelle’s WordPress School this year, I will be teaching you the words, jargon, and names of things, including their nick names. We’ll start with the word “WordPress.” WordPress WordPress is an Open Source web publishing, content management system platform. That’s a mouthful. Let’s break it down. Open Source Open Source is software for which […]

WordPress School: Posts and Pages

Let’s be Lorelle’s WordPress School with the two core content elements of WordPress: posts and Pages. By default, WordPress displays content in posts and Pages. Each behaves differently and distinctively in WordPress, and can confuse people easily. Let’s make this simple. Pages hold timeless content. Posts hold timely content. Please be patient with the videos. […]

WordPress School: Site Master Plan

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. Tony Robbins A website is an intangible, a virtual nothing in which we create something tangible to human perception. When it boils right down to it, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created nothing with WordPress. WordPress isn’t a physical object you can […]

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 […]

Site Review

DISCOUNT: Lorelle is offering her popular site reviews for 50% off during 2015 as part of her WordPress School year-long project teaching the basics of WordPress. The discount code is found in the introduction materials. Lorelle VanFossen offers three levels of site reviews, specifically for WordPress sites. The prices are the starting prices for the […]

WordPress and Blogging Workshop in Forest Grove, Oregon

On Friday, October 10, 2014, from 1-5PM I will be presenting a WordPress and Blogging Workshop in Forest Grove, Oregon, at the Forest Grove Senior and Community Center as a fundraiser for the center and part of the Writers in the Grove group. The price for this 4 hour event is $30 ($5 discount with […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Web is All About The Writing

Reading “7 Things You Need to Know about SEO in 2014” from Compete Pulse, I was fascinating to read that “size matters:” Most blog posts range between 400 and 600 words, but the ideal length for highest ranking is actually around 1,500. Many still believe that a successful website is one that offers the information […]

Robin Williams Starts Our Conversation on Depression, Suicide, and Mental Health

The world is grieving the loss of one of our favorite comedic and dramatic geniuses, Robin Williams, and the conversation begins about mental illness, depression, and suicide. The Facts As We Know It: The news arrived about 3:30PM PST that the actor had died due to suspected suicide. CNN reported that according to the Marin […]

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: Why We Dig

In the October issue of The Christian Science Monitor, I found this from John Yemma, Monitor Editor: Why we dig, and what we may find Sometimes a portal opens into the world of legend. A stone is rolled away from an Egyptian tomb revealing a 3,300 year old Pharaoh’s power and wealth. A Roman city […]

Blog Exercises: Where You Came From

Inspired by these blog exercises, Janet Williams of Janet’s Notebook has been taking her readers on a journey back through time and space, exploring her family’s Chinese heritage from her little corner of the south of England. Her “Letters from China” have evolved from a few posts to an entire series, and eventually, I hope, […]