On most WordPress blogs there exists the comments form – and on that form is a unique opportunity to hear from visitors.

Unfortunately, the percentage of good comments versus spam (the “signal to spam” ratio) is very low – because the more popular a blog gets, the more spam comes in (I won’t mention how much spam I used to clean out daily – it’s just too depressing).

However, for those of us considering a comment, here or anywhere, it’s time to explain how to comment – with a very …

I’m rearranging some of my articles by date, and find going into editing each one a pain – so I decided to give Quick Edit a try. And if you haven’t used it, you should too – it’s a great time savings.

For those not familiar with it, Quick Edit is an option shown as you move a mouse over each post in the Posts; Edit Menu in Admin (the other options are Edit, Delete, and View). Clicking on Quick Edit gives you just about everything but the articles content, …

I was watching Craig Ferguson on Friday (who by the way does a hilarious imitation of Barbara Walters), and he was interviewing Rosie O’Donnell.

For those who don’t know, Rosie has had a blog (Rosie.com) since 2003 – long before many had even heard of blogs. It’s been the source of information on many of her life’s adventures – her magazine, her sexuality, her ‘The View’ trials, and so forth.

In the interview she mentions moving away from the personal blogging to more professional aspects – blogging about events and …

It’s a little thing, but nice – those fancy pictures by the comments on some blogs.

They’re Gravatars, from (obviously) gravatar.com

The name stands for Globally Recognized AVATAR, and it’s the image that accompanies your email address, and that blogs understand and use (of course, the blog must understand how to use them – not all do)

To set one up:

Go to the Gravatar Central, at http://en.gravatar.com/

Sign up with an email account – note that this account should be for the email you’ll use on your comments (that’s …

I’ll answer the title question quickly – no, there are many others. A quick look on the search engines for “free blog” and “blog open source” will reveal many sites willing to host your blog, or provide you with free software to do it yourself.

So why WordPress?

In 2004, when I started working with WordPress, my main goal was to understand what all this ‘blogging’ was about. I’m not a big fan of writing online (I prefer getting paid for a printed copy of my words!), but I understood …