Blog Exercises: Unfinished Business

In this ongoing series called Blog Exercises, let’s tackle your UFOs. In quilting and sewing, UFO stands for Unfinished Objects. We all have them, in our work, our personal lives, and on our blog. Do you have a to do list hanging around your desk or locked in your phone regarding your blog? It’s time […]

Blog Exercises: Editorial Calendar Check-in for September

It’s time to check in on your editorial calendar for September. This means not just checking in on the holidays and events for September but also for October, November, and December. For those living in the “Western Civilization” and tied to the Christian Calendar, as well as those tied to Jewish and Muslim calendars, we’re […]

Blog Exercises: Site Goals

Early on in these Blog Exercises I asked you to clarify what you do and how you share your purpose on your site, what your target audience is, and review the why of why you blog and self-publish on the web. Hopefully you’ve had time over the past few months to digest those thoughts, evaluate […]

Blog Exercises: August Random Editing Day

Today it is 8 posts to edit on our monthly Random Editing Day. Each month in the Blog Exercises series, I challenge you to edit random published posts on your blog, adding one for every month of the year. This month is eight posts. Are you ready? It was easier in January and February if […]

Blog Exercises: July Summary

July is over. Seven months of Blog Exercises and you would think I’d be sick of these. Yet, I’ve got hundreds more. I fear my ability to fit it into one year. I might just have to keep going. The response has been amazing. I’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of websites and given feedback […]

Blog Exercises: Don’t Let Your Content Compete With Itself

I fear for what I’m about to say. Colored fonts are evil. I’m not talking about colored fonts in the website design, nor colored fonts in headings within your content. I’m talking about colorizing the words you are reading as you read, just because, and the because usually isn’t a good enough reason to make […]

Blog Exercises: Spell Checkup on Categories and Tags

Oh no! I was writing out a tag in WordPress and the auto-suggest feature popped up with a misspelled tag name! Yikes! Today’s blog exercise is to clean up your tag and category names to ensure you’ve not made the same mistakes. To review your category names in WordPress, go to Posts > Categories and […]

Blog Exercises: Under the Hood Spring Cleaning

One of my students in my Portland Community College WordPress class reminded me that clutter is clutter, no matter where you find it. Peter Smith reminds us that too many WordPress Themes is a waste of resources. Today, I feature his post to remind us all to clean up our sites under the hood. I […]

Blog Exercises for March

March was a busy month in my Blog Exercises series. Wow, are we already done with the third month in this year long series? The participants explored a wide variety of blog exercises on editing, blogger identity, content organization, and web writing. There were exercises to motivate and inspire you, and help you inspire your […]

Blog Exercises for February

We’ve completed the second month of Blog Exercises in February. Are you still with me? Here is the list. Blog Exercises: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About Blog Exercises: Honor the Past with Anniversaries and Birthdays Blog Exercises: Your Byline Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies Blog Exercises: Backlinks Blog Exercises: Category […]

Blog Exercises: Clean Up Your Most Popular Posts

“It’s dated 2008. It must be useless.” This was the response to an article I tweeted out recently. Yes, the article was dated 2008. Did that mean it wasn’t a valid, timely, and invaluable resource? It was, but that’s not the point. Some people equate old with useless. With the aging population gaining the majority […]

Blog Exercises: Random Edit Day February

It’s time for another Random Editing Day in the ongoing series of Blog Exercises to flex your blogging muscles. As outlined in the original exercise, your task today is to find two random previously published posts and edit them. Use the list in the original exercise as a review on what to look for when […]

What are the Essential WordPress Plugins You Can’t Live Without?

In my WordPress session at Barcamp Portland this past weekend, one of my favorite questions started the discussion: What are the most essential, must-have WordPress Plugins? My answer? None. Okay, not really. My honest answer is one: Akismet. Spam is the bane of our web experience. It comes in our emails and site comments. While […]