Cherryleaf has an informative article about technical writing in the cloud. Ellis Pratt writes, There are a number of reasons why a Technical Author might want to use a cloud-based application. The first reason is cost. Instead of purchasing an application, cloud-based applications are typically offered on a monthly fee basis. If you’re looking to move to a DITA authoring environment, this spreading of costs … more »

In my last post on wikis, Mark Baker added an astute comment: I’m not a wiki fan myself — I’m a structured text guy bred in the bone — but I am fascinated by the trend, and by the variety reactions to it. Wikis started more as a cultural statement than a technology. They were a tool for the democratization of content, the intent being … more »

Tomorrow I’m giving a four hour workshop on blogging and WordPress at the STC Summit in Sacramento. I thought I’d post my outline in case anyone is interested in how I approach these workshops. In preparing this outline, I realized that my focus on WordPress and blogging has shifted more towards producing content rather than manipulating the technology. Several years ago, you had to be … more »

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted about my team’s search for an enterprise authoring strategy. So far, we’re just as split as ever about the problem. It seems that you can go four separate routes: DITA, HAT, Web, or Wiki. Here are some of the paths and difficulties we’re encountering. DITA DITA has traction as a new standard format for help authoring, … more »

I have three WordPress tip videos for you today. Alternatives to Akismet for Blocking Spam Akismet, the plugin that blocks spam and is included in WordPress by default, is not really free if you have any kind of advertising, product or service, or high traffic. In this video, I show you a free alternative: antispambee. Headway — A WordPress Theme with Design Software One of … more »

Internet users have grown accustomed to free content. But this is not without its problems. Jeff Chandler used to produce a Weekly WordPress podcast. His last podcast, “I tried,” is dated back in December. It’s a long, tired explanation about the difficulties of pouring so much energy into an endeavor that has no substantial financial return. As he moves toward marriage and maintains a full-time … more »

You can easily add a calendar to your WordPress site through the ICS Calendar plugin. This plugin pulls in a calendar from google calendar and displays it on a wordpress page using some shortcode. Here’s an example of the integration I did for a client. You can also embed a Google calendar directly (example). For more wordpress tips, see my WordPress archive. Hat tip to … more »

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 … more »

Over the past several years, I’ve trained a lot of people on WordPress, through individual one-on-one training, seminars, workshops, and conference events. Most of the people who want to learn WordPress have plans for blogging. They think blogging requires you to understand the technology before they can jump in. But the technology is easy — learning how to navigate and publish content with WordPress is … more »

I’ve been thinking lately about my brand. I’ve always hated this marketing term, but the word “brand” does help answer a question. When you think of me, what comes to your mind? I’ve written about a lot of different topics on this blog, everything from findability to podcasting, blogging, technical writing, flare, wikis, screencasts, project managers, content organization, and more. My content is diverse enough … more »

A lot of people don’t realize that they’re missing unique authentication keys in their WordPress’s wp-config.php file. These unique authentication keys will help keep your WordPress site more secure. In this screencast, I show you how to add the necessary authentication keys.

When you upload photos to a post in WordPress, the photos become associated with the post. If you insert the word gallery in brackets (as shown below), the post will show all the post’s photos in a thumbnail grid.

Last week I attended WordCamp Utah and spoke with one of the “happiness engineers” who works at Automattic. (Automattic is the the company that provides WordPress.com and also leads development of the open-source WordPress software.) The happiness engineer, Sherri, told me about a new alternative to the Codex and WordPress.com Help for ramping up on WordPress: learn.wordpress.com. At first glance, learn.wordpress.com looks plain and somewhat un-instructive, … more »

In working with clients on WordPress projects, I routinely run across people who forget their WordPress username and password. Fortunately, if you still remember the FTP username and password, just upload this “emergency.php” script from Yoast to your root directory, go to http://yoursite.com/emergency.php, and voila, you can change your WordPress username and password. You may need to download the wp-config.php file to grab the database … more »

Yesterday a couple of people asked me how to embed videos into WordPress posts. Rather than copying the entire embed code that youtube provides, you can actually just insert the link to the video into your post. WordPress will then pull the video in. This is a feature called auto-embed.