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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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: Ingredients of a Professional Site

Two questions on the same day triggered this blog exercise. I was asked by a student in my WordPress class recently what defined a “professional blog.” I told him it was one that met all the criteria for a well-designed, well-formed site that met web standards. This is a good definition, but lacked specifics. A […]

Blog Exercises: What’s the View Through Your Binoculars

One of my favorite things is a framed picture by Matt Mullenweg of an old set of mounted binoculars. The eye pieces are worn and the blue paint on the metal binoculars looks like it’s not the first coat of paint it has seen. It’s wonderful, and I find new meaning in it every time […]

Blog Exercises: Organize Your Content

In “The Giant Blog Exercise Check List Part 1” I presented you with a giant list of all the posts I’ve published in these Blog Exercises so far in 2013. It was an amazing exercise and it is now your turn to do the same exercise. Your blog exercise today is to create a link […]

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: How to Respond to a Copyright Violation

While I know that you would never violate anyone’s copyright and publish other people’s content without proper citation or permission, there are hundreds of thousands who think that if it is on the web, it’s free to use and abuse. Accusations of copyright violations are big deals. Some top journalists, writers, photographers, musicians, software developers, […]

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: Share Your Fear

When was the last time you blogged your fears? Well, not all of them but one of them? In 2006, popular tech blogger Robert Scoble changed directions and blogged about his mother in critical condition in the hospital. This is one of those times when I’m not sure what to write. The size of my […]