WordPress Tip: Making Elements Overlap on Your Site

In this WordPress tip, I show you how to make elements overlap. You have to add a position and z-index declaration in each of the styles that are overlapping. I also explain a tip for making the overlapping image fit seamlessly on top of the other element, without a white border. See more WordPress Tips.

WordPress Tip: Eliminating Spam

One way you can eliminate spam (besides activating Akismet) is by removing all the spam that shows up in comment threads on specific posts. This is because spam attracts spam. So if you can cut out spam from a post, you're less likely to get more spam on that same post.

New Baby Molly

Shannon had baby Molly on September 1, just a couple of hours before midnight. Molly is 8 lbs 15 oz and about 20 inches tall. She is healthy and has brownish hair. Before we went to the hospital, Shannon was about a week and a half overdue. Every extra day seemed like an eternity and we were glum with anticipation waiting for the contractions to start. After 12 days, at her checkup the midwife noted a slight deceleration in the baby's heart r...

Organizing for Learnability [Organizing Content #25]

Findability / organizing content 1.0 New Series: Organizing Content [Organizing Content 1] 1.2 Introducing Project Swordfish [Organizing Content 2] 1.3 Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold [Organizing Content 3] ...

WordPress Tip: Showing the Full Content Versus the Excerpt

You can configure your home page to show the full content of each post or an excerpt. You can also configure your archives to display the content or an excerpt. The excerpt strips all HTML formatting, but the content doesn't strip any formatting and will display all content up until your Read More tag. See more WordPress Tips.

WordPress Tip: Improve Your Blog's Loading Speed

In this WordPress tutorial, I show you how to measure your blog's loading speed, and then tweak your theme to strip away the content that is dragging down the load time. The site I use to measure loading speed is webpagetest.org. See more WordPress Tips.

Perspectives on a Career in Technical Writing: Responses from 16 Tech Comm Professionals

Students at Missouri State University asked me some questions about technical writing as a career. To provide a balance of opinion and perspective, I opened up the questions to my Twitter followers and asked them to respond as well. What is your job title? Eileen Potter: Senior Product Content Specialist (in June I changed positions within my company, previous title was Senior Technical Writer) Richard Rabil, Jr.: Technical Writer III Sus...

I miss working with my hands

A career in technical writing is a sedentary, almost motionless desk job. The greater endurance you have to sit still and keep your hands on the keyboard or mouse pad, the more productive you'll be. I am starting to miss working with my hands, and walking around. During the past few weeks, the "Mr-Fix-It" section in my brain kicked in. A while ago, I had the idea of fixing everything that is broken with my house. To list what I've been do...

100 Rejected Summit Proposals

100 Rejected Summit Proposals The call for STC Summit proposals is now open. Below are 100 Summit proposals that were rejected in the past. They may be helpful as you prepare your own submission. 100 Mistakes I Made During My First Hour as a Technical Writer Technical Writer Versus Technical Communicator Versus Technical Who Are We? Who ARE We? Robohelp Versus Flare: The Final Showdown, This Time the Matter Will Be Settled Physically Pr...

Best Practices for Writing Interface Text [Organizing Content #24]

Findability / organizing content 1.0 New Series: Organizing Content [Organizing Content 1] 1.2 Introducing Project Swordfish [Organizing Content 2] 1.3 Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold [Organizing Content 3] ...

The Interface Is Text [Organizing Content #23]

Findability / organizing content 1.0 New Series: Organizing Content [Organizing Content 1] 1.2 Introducing Project Swordfish [Organizing Content 2] 1.3 Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold [Organizing Content 3] ...

WordPress Tip: When you Forget your WordPress Username and Password

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 ...

The Technical Writer as an Outsider: How Ambitious Are You? [Organizing Content #22]

Findability / organizing content 1.0 New Series: Organizing Content [Organizing Content 1] 1.2 Introducing Project Swordfish [Organizing Content 2] 1.3 Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold [Organizing Content 3] ...

WordPress Tip: Embed a Video into a Post Using WordPress's Auto-Embed Feature

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.

Editorial Strategies and Mind Games

This week, after Mindtouch released its top 25 elite blogger list, most of the tech comm blogosphere was taking bows and saying congratulations and writing posts that began I'm-so-honored and wow-what-can-I-say. These posts started to make me feel a little ill, because I suppose I enjoy reading more about suffering than success, but that's beside my point here. Reflecting on my rank, I felt an irony about it all. Apparently the ability to...