[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 90 min. Lyn Worthen presented to the STC Intermountain chapter tonight on running your own business as a technical communications consultant. She covers almost everything you need to know as a consultant, including rates, billing, contracts, marketing, taxes, business structures, hours, salary, tools, locations, niche services, portfolios, client communications, and more. Here’s her presentation description: … more »

This Wednesday, Jan 20, there’s an Intermountain STC Chapter meeting at 7 pm. in the Sandy library. Lyn Worthen will be speaking on running your own technical communications consulting business. Here’s an excerpt from her description: Unlike the consistent schedule, workload, and wages of a 9-5 technical writing job, going it on your own as a consultant or contractor is a lot like riding the … more »

WordPress’s threaded comments feature is not entirely now; it’s been around since 2.7 (the current version of WordPress is 2.7.1). But even though under Settings > Discussion you see the ability to activate threaded comments and indicate how many levels deep you want it to be, you have to actually make some changes to your theme for threaded comments to work. The following screenshot shows … more »

Working in technology, I spend a good amount of my time troubleshooting. When things go wrong, I’ve learned a few tips and techniques: Compare line by line against a working model List all the components and how they work together Challenge every assumption Reboot or reinstall Google the error messages you see Site-search key sites Come back to it later Contact an expert Post the … more »

My WordPress consulting side business has been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact, I’ve been struggling to keep up. (I do this, by the way, mainly on the weekends.) Over the last several projects, I’ve noticed a common trend of questions about WordPress and blogging. Here’s what everyone asks. I already have a site. How can I add a WordPress blog to it? … more »