To keep your WordPress blog secure and up-to-date, you want to apply the latest updates. When there's an update available, you see it at the top of your Dashboard area. To upgrade WordPress: 1. First back up your files. You should already have an automated backup strategy in place. Two backup plugins I like to use are WP-dbmanager and WordPress Database Backup. To install one of these plugins, to go Plugins > Add New, search for it, an...
One of the most difficult elements of screencasting is getting good audio. I implemented a technique in my last video that I thought worked quite well. I'm calling this the Self-Dub technique. Here's what you do. Whether you write out a script beforehand or not, it doesn't really matter. Just record the screencast while simultaneously narrating. After the screencast, proceed through each of the sentences and dub over them. For example, li...
A podcast summary by David Armano from Edelman caught my attention yesterday. Armano writes: My theory is that social technologies and the online behaviors they enable leads to more participation from what use to be static audiences and "consumers". But as a result of this, a demand is generated for participation to be reciprocated from business and brands. If this is true (and I think the needle is moving in that direction) does big busi...
The other week I was in Atlanta preparing for a keynote address at Currents when my host, Chris Snider, asked me what question I'm most afraid people will ask. Although I didn't say it at the time, the question I fear most is this: "Exactly how long have you been a technical writer?" About five and a half years, that's all. I graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in English in 1999, earned an MFA in literary nonfiction from Co...
Scott Abel has a good post on content curation strategies. He writes, In order to develop an active and engaged audience, you have to publish as much interesting and informative content as possible — as often as possible! He notes how tweets and blog posts are short-lived, so you have to keep publishing all the time: ... Add to the mix the sheer volume of tweets, posts, and updates being made every hour on socially-enabled sites around th...
In looking back over 2010, mobile trends dominated the marketplace. MobileFuture.org created the following video to illustrate: Here are a few of the surprising mobile stats: FIVE BILLION apps downloaded — up from 300 million in 2009 347 PERCENT growth in Twitter mobile usage 100 MILLION YouTube videos played on mobile devices everyday 3,000 PERCENT growth in one carrier's data traffic since 2008 3,339: average number of texts sent p...
Quick Reference Guides as Christmas Gifts I was surprised and mildly pleased this weekend to see my sister-in-law Karin give a quick reference guide or "cheat sheet," as she called it, to her grandma for her birthday. The guide focused on accessing and sending email in Gmail. Grandma was grateful and elated to see the work and detail that went into the guide, which was laminated and narrow enough to prop up next to her [ancient] computer....
After releasing documentation for a calendar application, we received so many questions and frustrated feedback from users that I started thinking about publishing a page in the help describing what the calendar doesn't do. I'm in an agile shop, so the calendar is still undergoing development, and many of the features people want are eventually coming; other features are problematic due to bugs; other features are frustrating by design. :...
Some of my projects include community-involved documentation. When you work for a church, it's not hard to find dedicated members willing and committed to sacrificing a few hours for a higher cause. To harness community efforts, I gathered up a large pool of volunteer names and formed a listserv. I communicated project needs with the listserv members and asked for help. Despite some contributions, the majority of volunteers are hindered b...
If you haven't seen it yet, check out Best Careers 2011: Technical Writer - US News and World Report. It doesn't amaze me that technical writer is listed in the top 50 careers. Technical writer appeared as a top 50 career in 2006 and 2009 in CNN Money. Each year there's a lot of controversy about the description, but this year, some things are especially intriguing. US News and World Report says as a technical writer, "you'd work with com...
One of my readers, Shweta, asks the following question: I am a Technical Communicator working in a software services company in India. I have been reading your posts daily from a long time now. I am developing end-user documentation for an access control product. The current application that I have is huge and so is the user manual (550 pages, which I am sure not even 55 users will read). It also has an over exhaustive online help (not co...
Integrating a WordPress blog into your website is one of the most common requests I receive as a WordPress consultant. Whenever someone asks me to do this, I usually recommend moving the entire website into WordPress. That way you can manage all the content in one place. The user experience is more seamless too. If you're interested in having me convert your website into a WordPress-driven site, contact me. Here's a 5 minute screencast s...
Voiceover techniques 1.1 Finding a Conversational Voice in Video Tutorials 1.2 The Problem with Speaking Conversationally in Video Tutorials 1.3 Finding an acoustic environment (Voiceover) 1.4 Sounding natural (Voi...
One part I enjoyed about my Xtranormal videos was writing the script about the insane spreadsheet that the project manager foists on the technical writer in an effort to track, manage, and contain the writer with busy work. That's how PM templates have always seemed to me, which explains my reaction when Derek, my colleague, told me he was creating a user education template for a new project management methodology -- I wasn't excited abou...
Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign integrate in a cool way when it comes to images. Let's say you have a layered image in Illustrator. When you insert that illustrator .ai file into InDesign, you can turn the layers on or off within InDesign itself. This control with the layers allows you to use the same image multiple times without duplicating it or exporting it to another format. Here's a screencast showing how I implemented this inte...
