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.

First Time Camping Trip

We survived. Actually, we had a tremendously fantastic time. It even rained on us. YEAH, GESHAM! (Hebrew for rain). I picked up my friend, Ruth, from her office and we raced out of Tel Aviv and headed north to escape the wilds of civilization. We headed up to the Carmel mountains, a row of “hills” […]

Green River Killer Captured in Seattle

The news today from the United States (heard on NPR streaming across my broadband Internet) is all about the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, entering his guilty plea to the courts in Seattle. What a scare from the past. Growing up in Seattle, in the early 1980’s we were absolutely terrified by the threat of […]

Telling Maureen About Dahni

On a personal note, I couldn’t sleep last night, going over and over how hard it was to tell my friend, Maureen, about Dahni’s death. A lot of emotion I’d kept under control was bubbling out around the edges. I miss his presence so much – he was everywhere in our lives all the time. […]

Isn’t It November…yet?

Still warm here. I’m so tired of it. The coolness we experienced for all of 6 hours last week is totally gone and the heat is back. Ugh. I talked to my mother in Seattle for a bit this morning (her evening) and she told me that the first snows have arrived in the mountains […]

Jerusalem – A Lesson in Palestinian Politics

It is so incredibly hard to imagine that it is November and it is so freaking hot outside. I’m so tired of the air conditioning…anyway, I’m plugging away at this web page conversion. It is going fairly smoothly, with only a few glitches. On Friday, Brent and I went to Jerusalem for the laying of […]

Step-By-Step Website Development

Today’s businesses require letterhead and envelopes, business cards, ads in the Yellow Pages, and web pages as part of their business stationary. Even if you have the smallest of businesses with a limited clientèle, a website is part of your professional arsenal to attract and keep clients. People new to the Internet or web pages […]

Step-By-Step Website Development – Check List

The following is a simplified checklist for the development and design of a Website ($ indicates potential additional fees): Development Gathering of information related to site content Website Name (Domain Name) Research Competition Researched Website Title Chosen Website Host Research Website Host Chosen and Registered $ Website Name Chosen Website Name Purchase $ Website Structure […]

Website Development and Design Form Instructions

Web Site Development Web Site Development Introduction Web Site Development Checklist Site Development Form Explanation and Instructions Web Site Development Form Web Site Structure Chart The process of beginning or redesigning a web site begins with a step-by-step process of gathering information about your web site content, information, links, format, and structure. To follow is […]

Website Development and Design Form

Complete the following questions to the best of your ability. The answers are not final and can be changed at any time during the process of developing and designing your Website. Company Information Company Name:   Address/Location:   Phone:   Fax:   Cell:   Email:   Owner Name:   Phone:   Email:   Website Support: […]

Website Structure Chart

The following sets an initial structure for your website. Imagine your website like a tree with the main branch as your first page and the related pages as branches of that tree. Typical content is included (cross off if not applicable) to help organize your site’s structure. Main Page 1. Purpose 2. Product List 3. […]

Introduction to Website Development

Got to have a web page! Don’t you? Of course you do! Everyone must have one. Well, maybe not everyone, but if you are in business or have something worthwhile to contribute to the world as a whole, then you should join those among the 4.3 billion web pages online…give or take a few. Whether […]

Start With Compliance

Before you can get your web page noticed, you have to make sure all the parts fit together and it works properly. Why? Well, in order to be seen, the page has to work. In other words, all the pieces and parts must be read by the user’s Internet browser, interpreted, and displayed upon the […]

Validating the Code Behind the Page

Checking Content Begin your web page validation by checking the content of your page. It’s actually fairly simple. Is everything spelled correctly? Are the sentences compete? Is the grammar right? While this should be done at the time of creation, after you’ve messed around with the code for a while, you often have a fresh […]

Test Driving WordPress

There is a lot to think about in preparation for putting WordPress on our site and ramming our site down its throat. The first thing I needed to do was set up a “test” area on my site to start working on all of this. If it is a complete failure, then I can delete […]

Get Ready for Search Engines

Preparing your Website for search engines means tackling the following: Searcher’s Needs Search Engine Requirements Meta Tags Content Viability Internal Links External Links Linkability How Do Search Engines Work? There are several kinds of search engines. Some collect their own data through “robots” or “spiders”, software that crawls through the web, tracking the various links […]