This is post 674 since I started blogging in July of 2005. For all of those 674 posts, I've depended on the WordPress platform to power JimRaffel.com. I've watched WordPress grow into the feature-rich, community-supported, open source solution it is today. As great as WordPress is, if you're goal is … [Read more...]
WordCamp Detroit Takeaways
I find it useful to turn notes from attending conferences into a blog post of takeaways. This is not meant to be a roundup of the entire two-day conference. It's just those things that caught my interest and that I plan to follow up on in the next week or so. I've tried to provide attribution where … [Read more...]
iPhone 4S apps I use
Over the past month of iPhone 4S ownership, I've come to depend on several apps to make the device more useful to me. Several of you have been asking what apps I like so it seemed easiest just to list them here. I've broken them into the same categories (or folders) I organize them with on the … [Read more...]
WordCamp Love
WordPress is more than a blogging platform. It's a worldwide community of folks brought together by a common love of the blogging/content management system that has changed the way about 15 percent of us build a presence on the internet. One of the ways the community comes together face-to-face is … [Read more...]
WordPress and MAMP
Following are the slides from my presentation last night at the Milwaukee WordPress Meetup. Without the context of my talk and the question and answer session that followed, they lack context but nonetheless here they are. The goal of the presentation is being able to do WordPress development on … [Read more...]
3 Favorite Blogging Tips and Tricks
If you are a one-person "blog as a business," then it's likely the writing part of the blog is the easy half of the equation for you. For many, the technical side of running a blog can be far more challenging. I've got a tech background and often find this to be the case. My three favorite blogging … [Read more...]
Blogging and SEO – Shelby Says
When Jim and I presented She Said, He Said Live for the first time at WordCamp Chicago last weekend, we had an interesting discussion with audience members about blogging and search engine optimization (SEO). We liked the conversation so much that we decided to incorporate it as a topic for this … [Read more...]
5 WordCamp Chicago Session Takeaways
I'm just back from two information packed days at WordCamp Chicago. After a conference, I try to find time to write down my takeaways. Generally my intention is to act upon the takeaways in a timely fashion. That does not always happen. So, writing this post serves two purposes for me: sharing the … [Read more...]
How Thesis Theme makes managing blog post images easy
If you've been a reader here for any length of time, you know I utilize the Thesis Theme to power this site as well as several others. Because seldomly read documentation, I "discover" Thesis features almost daily. For example, I add an image to almost every post on this blog. For a few months, I … [Read more...]
Stop giving content away for free
There are a whole lot of people writing for free these days. My question is why? Why would you give away your time? Yes, I believe there are plenty of situations that warrant donating your time to a cause. Open source software projects like WordPress are just one such example. Even contributing blog … [Read more...]