September 18, 2013 – 4:29 am
It’s time to blog the news and current events for September in our Blog Exercises. This month, I want you to dig deeper into the news, targeting your specific industry and niche. With several months of blogging the news once a month under your belt, you should have set up some good resources in your […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips, Writing
| Tags: blog exercises, blog writing, blogging tips, current events, how to blog, news, reference articles, references, resource articles, resources, sources, tips, web writing, writing for the web |
August 16, 2013 – 4:02 am
I hear this complaint frequently from new and long time bloggers. “I don’t have any comments. How can I get more comments?” First of all, let me explain something and I want you to read closely. You don’t want comments. Yes, that’s right. You do not want comments. At least not comments from anyone. If […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips
| Tags: audience, blog conversation, blog exercises, comment box, comment spam, comments, conversation, demographics, dialog, interactivity, social web, web writing, writing for the web, writing for your audience |
It’s Editorial Calender check-in and check up time. May is the shift from spring to summer. From blossoming flowers to green leafed trees casting shade, the weather is changing, bringing warmer days to the northern hemisphere and colder temperatures down under. For those of us living in the Pacific Northwestern United States, we are experiencing […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips, Writing
| Tags: blog exercises, blog writing, blogging tips, content, content management, content organization, content strategies, content structure, editorial calendar, how to blog, how to write, organization, planning, schedule, Writing, writing for the web |
It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips, Writing
| Tags: blog exercises, blogger guidelines, blogger safety, bloggers code, bloggers code of ethics, bloggers ethics, bloggers rights, blogging ethics, blogging guidelines, blogging tips, code of ethics, comment policies, comments, copyright, copyright policies, disclosure, disclosure policies, ethical issues, ethics, freedom of speech, guidelines, legal, legal issues, legal policies, legal rights, liability, liability policies, opinion, personal, personal information, policies, privacy, privacy policies, protection, safety, security, self-protection, web publishing, Writing, writing for the web, writing tips |
I’ve mentioned using headings in your post articles throughout these Blog Exercises. Let’s look closer at these HTML tags that help you structure and increase the readability of your blog posts. Headings are HTML tags used to set the section or subsection titles within your blog posts. They divide your content into sections, but they […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, blogging tips, Web Design, WordPress, WordPress Tips, Writing
| Tags: accessibility, blog exercises, blogging tips, content, content organication, h1, h2, h3, h4, headings, headings tag, how to blog, how to write a post, html, post format, post structure, readability, seo, Usability, Web Design, web publishing, wordpress, WordPress Tips |
Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blogging, blogging tips, WordPress, WordPress News
| Tags: akismet, comment spam, comments, evil, spam, spam comments, wordpress, WordPress News, WordPress Tips |
Categories are your site’s table of contents. Tags are your index words. While it is simple to explain the two basic organizational and navigation elements of a WordPress site, coming up with tags for each post is a struggle many bloggers battle. Tags represent micro-categorization of your site’s content. It helps the visitor find closely […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips, WordPress, WordPress Tips, Writing
| Tags: blog exercises, blogging tips, categorizaton, content, content organization, content tags, how to tag posts, navigation, organization, post tags, posts, structure, tags, tags and categories, web writing, wordpress, WordPress Tips, writing for the web, writing tips |
February 12, 2013 – 4:35 am
In these Blog Exercises, I am faced with a category quandary. For the most part, these are blogging tips, so they should go into my Blogging Tips category as well as Blog Exercises category, right? Maybe right. These Blog Exercises are meant to have some form of order, though they may be done in any […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips, Writing
| Tags: blog exercise, blog exercises, blogging, blogging tips, body or work, categories, categorization, content, content with intent, format, organization, parent categories, planning, structure, sub-categories, tags, web writing, Writing, writing for the web |
February 7, 2013 – 4:29 am
Known as incoming links or referrer links, backlinks are links pointing from an external site to your site, directing their readers to you as a resource. Timethief of “one cool site blogging tips” describes backlinks as: Backlinks to your content are like votes for your blog. The more backlinks your blog receives the higher it […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Exercises, Blogging, blogging tips, Writing
| Tags: analytics, appreciation, backlinks, blog exercise, blog exercises, external sites, friends, incoming links, linking, links, relationships, seo, stats, thank you, web analytics, web writing, Writing |
January 23, 2013 – 10:02 pm
The following are classes and workshops offered by Lorelle VanFossen. Workshops and Courses Lorelle offers a wide range of WordPress, web publishing, web writing, social media, and blogging courses, along with some other related topics such as family history on the web, photography, and Scrivener. Here are some of the latest offerings. Introduction to WordPress: […]
January 23, 2013 – 6:45 pm
February 18 – March 25, you will find me teaching “Writing for the Web” for Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education on Mondays from 1:30-4:30PM in the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. Come join me! This is the first class of its kind at the […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Announcements, Blogging, Blogging News, blogging tips, WordPress, WordPress Events, WordPress News, WordPress Tips, Writing
| Tags: announcements, blog news, blogging news, clark college, classes, education, events, how to use wordpress, learn wordpress, news, web publishing, web publishing help, web writing, wordpress, wordpress help, WordPress News, WordPress Tips, wordpress tutorials, workshops, writing for the web |
December 5, 2012 – 8:07 pm
In anticipation of the planets alignment, I went digging for some cool Android apps to see the stars, and some awesome astronomy blogs to keep myself updated. Let’s start with the awesome astronomy bloggers. Blogging the Stars When I think about those blogging the stars, I don’t think Perez Hilton. I think about those truly […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blog Babble, Blogging, Blogging News
| Tags: alignment, android, astronomers, astronomy, astronomy apps, bloggers, december 21 2012, mobile apps, planets, planets aligning, science, space, space apps, space bloggers, space blogs, star apps, star chart apps, star charts |
November 1, 2012 – 10:37 am
Matt Mullenweg of Automattic, WordPress.com, the self-hosted version of WordPress, was featured today on the Wall Street Journal Business talking about the fact that WordPress now supports 14% of all websites in the world, approximately 1 in 6 globally. Matt talked about the future of WordPress and made these three points. WordPress as a CMS: […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in WordPress, WordPress News
| Tags: automattic, cms, matt mullenweg, mobile, news, social blogging, social media, touch, wall street journal, wordpress, wordpress in the news, WordPress News, wordpress publicity, wordpress.com, WordPressDotCom, wsj |
October 4, 2012 – 2:25 pm
According to the American Library Association, September 30 through October 6, 2012, is a salute to Banned Books week. Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in Blogging, Blogging News
| Tags: arrest, ban, banned bloggers, banned blogs, banned blogs list, blocked blogs, bloggers, blogging, blogging censorship, censorship, civil rights, eff, electronic frontier foundation, freedom, freedom of speech, laws, legal, list of banned blogs, politics, speech, Writing |
August 24, 2012 – 6:48 pm
At the recent WordCamp Portland 2012, I was asked by several attendees to cover the basics of WordPress and we came up with What You Most Need to Know About WordPress. Here are the “notes” from that unconference presentation. The Difference Between Categories and Tags I hear this question at WordCamps, from readers, students, and […]
By Lorelle VanFossen
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Posted in blogging tips, WordCamps, WordPress, WordPress Events, WordPress News, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips, Writing
| Tags: blog writing, blogging tips, hacked, hacking, headings, how to blog, how to blog with WordPress, how to use wordpress, images, links, multimedia, post content, security, security vulnerability, seo, vulnerability, what you most need to know in wordpress, wordpress, wordpress and seo, wordpress essentials, wordpress help, WordPress News, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips, wordpress tutorials, Writing, writing tips |
Blog Exercises: I Don’t Have Any Comments
I hear this complaint frequently from new and long time bloggers. “I don’t have any comments. How can I get more comments?” First of all, let me explain something and I want you to read closely. You don’t want comments. Yes, that’s right. You do not want comments. At least not comments from anyone. If […]