with Lorelle and Brent VanFossen

Author Archives: Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen is one of the top bloggers in the world, and host of the Lorelle on WordPress, providing WordPress and blogging tips for bloggers of all levels. A popular keynote speaker and trainer, she is also editor, producer, contributor, and official disruptive thinker for Bitwire Media which includes WordCast, Making My Life Network, Stories of Our Journeys, Life on the Road, WordCast Conversations, and the very popular WordCast Podcast. She is also author of one of the first books on blogging, "Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging" and the recently released ebook, Social Media for Crafters: Covering the Basics of the Social Web. Taking Your Camera on the Road, founded by Lorelle, is one of the oldest personal websites in continuous existence in the world.

Importing Into WordPress with the Import-mt

I finally got the import-mt.php import file that comes with the default WordPress installation to work. Whew! What a long and hard ride, but I learned a lot and I hope you will find some lessons here, too. Some of the following information might be a little redundant, but if you are finding this page […]

Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama

This year, Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, the “original” Mardi Gras, began January 8 and runs through the big events on February 8. I didn’t realize that the events for Mardi Gras had already begun since the local newspaper here had a huge mention that the January 23 issue would have a full schedule of […]

What is Brent Working On?

Everyone is asking me about what is Brent working on with his new job in Mobile, Alabama. Well, folks, the basic description is that he is working on technology that will allow airline travelers to surf while they fly – wireless internet connections via a built-in satellite onboard the airplane allowing passengers to stay in […]

Voices in the Wilderness – Iraq

There is always another side to war, occupation, fighting for freedom, resistance, and whatever you want to name the violence that comes with other people wanting to impose their will upon others. An interesting site, Voices in the Wilderness, seems to represent a group of non-violent protestors and helpers reporting on what is going on […]

The Art of Navigation – Maps, Tracks and Getting Lost

We have every kind of map you can imagine for our life on the road. Street maps, local maps, fold-out maps, computerized maps (two different programs!), maps in books, maps on backs of flyers and, our personal favorite, hand drawn maps from people we meet along the way with a locale in mind that we […]

Archiving the Smithsonian Websites

And I think I have problems converting my site over to WordPress. This is an amazingly thorough study called Archiving Smithsonian Websites: An Evaluation and Recommendation for a Smithsonian Institution Archives Pilot Project. It looks, step-by-painful-step, at the process the Smithsonian took to convert their websites to database driven power sites. WOW! I will be […]

Taking a Trip – But Not By Train

Our “stuff” from Israel has finally made it across the sea, through TWO f#$*&%#$! $#%@# %*&%!! #$%*&(*@#$!!!!ing inspections by the @$#%!*# %$*# @ and @#$%(*)(@ing Homeland Security Customs Inspection Team – other than two gas masks, why would they think WE are terrorists? And the stuff has come all the way from New York, through […]

Really Rocking with WordPress

After treading carefully around the PHP and coding of WordPress, I have become fearless. I just installed the WP Plugin Manager and wish I had done this months ago. Today I bravely added the following plug-ins, hacks and changes, and I am thrilled with the results. StatTraq A PHP function that works with WordPress to […]

A Tribute to Flo Hein

This is the newspaper death announcement my mother, Ramona Fletcher, wrote about one of her very long time best friends, and a mentor to me. Florence Rose Hein Florence Rose Hein, of Marysville, Washington, died of cancer December 27, 2004, at the age of 78. Her last days were at Everett Transition Care, where she […]

Compromises Along the WordPress Import Path

Okay, I made a lot of mistakes along the way to forcing my static HTML information into the WordPress database. In an effort to help others learn from my mistakes and compromises, I present mine to the world so you can see that a lot of hard work and screw ups went into the finished […]

Manually Importing Into WordPress Databases

Throughout this long and tedious process, I even tried manually importing my static html pages into WordPress, after they had been converted to XHTML, cleaned up and restructured to meet the manual MySQL import layout. Since I was working with material I’d already cleaned up, changing it from the import-mt format to the MySQL import […]

Lorelle’s List of Spam Words for WordPress

After battling long and hard with spammers, I’ve created a huge comment spam words list for filtering out the nasty comment spammers on my site. If you have WordPress or any other blogging or CMS software, add these to your comment spam list. You can also use this if your email software permits such word […]

Creating One Big Import File

I’d validated a lot of the HTML of my web pages, then ran it through a conversion from HTML to XHTML, and searched and replaced across the multiple files to eliminate the redundant styles, HTML structures, meta tags, javascripts, and unwanted elements, reducing it down to the Title, Author, Excerpt, and Body content. What remained […]

Imitating MovableType Import File

When I’d search and replaced the parts of each page that could be eliminated, I needed to start the next series of search and replaces which would turn the information into the MoveableType format. Following the guidelines set up in the article MoveableType Instructions for Importing Data, I had a format to follow and a […]

Slicing and Dicing

Okay, so I’ve been neglectful of my online journal. It’s for a very good reason. See, I thought I would try for a new look. You all know I’m the queen of fashion – in fact, I’m head of my time – all the time. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, not even Madonna can keep up […]