Mein WordPress Kampf

So, prior to last summer, I’d never blogged on the internet before. I knew I wanted a website for my writings, and this train of thought led me to wanting more web savvy in general. Since I was going to teach myself Web Design and Production anyway, I decided to go back to school and work towards a degree in the field.

Summer quarter 2013 came along, and I started at Clark College in Vancouver, WA. I decided to take English 101 during my first quarter to help me get comfortable going back to school. (And it’s required for pretty much every degree.) Yeah, I’ve taken 101 at college before, but so long ago it seems another life.

The Final Word: WordPressin’10

Did you miss the previous part of this series? Part nine is here….

So tonight was the last meeting of the WordPress class I took this quarter and have blogged about many times. It’s a bittersweet feeling, ‘cos it was such a great class and great people. We’ll never be all together in that combination again, you know? I’ll see most of them in other classes here and there since we’re all doing Web degrees, but this particular class will never be again.

How to Create the “Perfect” Post, part two

(Again, reblogged from the Clark WP site.)

Entr’acte

Welcome to part two! Did you have a nice intermission?

Here in the second act we will cover the last few general tips I have for you to make your content sing out like the proverbial fat lady. Because, remember: you may have composed the grandest aria ever but if your presentation is scrawny and slim, nobody can hear it. So let’s continue to make your presentation gloriously obese!

It must be over!

No, no. We’re just getting started!

The End is Nigh: WordPressin’ 9

That’s right. The quarter at Clark College is almost over, and with it the WordPress class I’ve been blogging about in this series.

Check out my previous post here:
WordPressin’8

Lorelle has already given her last lecture, which was about Writing for the Web and Horse Sex. Specifically, the story of horse sex was about the post that drove most of the traffic to her blog and it was a hilarious tale. The moral was be careful what you post and what you want your blog to be known for. Sorry. That moral isn’t as funny as the story itself, but it’s really not my tale to tell, it’s Lorelle’s. Take her class someday and you might hear it!

The Words of Lorelle: WordPressin’ 8

*This article is part of a series! Collect them all!

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five/Six
• Part Seven

This is Lorelle VanFossen. She’s damn glad to meet you.

So this week on WordPressin’  we are going to let Lorelle take over.  For those of you who don’t know, Lorelle VanFossen has been involved with WordPress since its inception as a consultant and early tester. She has been blogging since before “blogging” was a word. She has published many books and is a featured speaker at WordPress and blogger events all over the world. Here at Clark College, we are very lucky to have her guiding us through this class as her expertise and passion is unmatched. It is exhausting but rewarding to take a class with her. I can’t say enough, so I’ll stop(for now).

Ten Questions with Super Saiyan M: WordPressin’ 7

So we need to publish an interview on the Clark College WP site for one of our required articles. I decided to try to get a normal, everyday blogger to answer a number of my Mike Wallace-like probing queries. Reaching out to a blogger that I’ve developed a friendship with through comments, I asked Super Saiyan M to receive my third-degree.

Liebster, mein liebchen

So someone nominated my blog for the Liebster Award. During my research (a whole article!) I discovered that this is both a real, and imaginary thing. It exists only because bloggers decide that it exists. I mean that no “Liebster Commission” is going to come to my door like I won the Publishers’ Clearing House and present me with anything. To be nominated means you’ve been nominated.  And that’s all it seems to mean. Nothing else comes with this. I can copy an image of the award and stick it on my site as if I have accomplished something. Or…one can choose not to acknowledge the thing…. though the article I perused gives diresome warnings about pissing off well-intentioned award-bestowers and losing readers by this type of anti-social behavior.

I Lost on Jeopardy*: WordPressin’ 6

*”I Lost on Jeopardy” is a parody song by Weird Al Yankovic. YouTube it.

Click here for WordPressin’ pt.1; here for pt.2; here for pt.3; here for pt.4!

(Where is pt. 5? Wouldn’t you like to know? Maybe I censored it because it struck too tender a nerve. Maybe I’m superstitious about the number 5. Am I commemorating the week I forgot to post a WordPressin’ article by skipping the number? Or did I forget my numbering in my haste to get a new post done, and then enter all this nonsense later to try to cover? Why don’t I just change the number to five instead of doing all this? I don’t know. Stop bothering me!)

So lately I’ve found myself pressed for time and pressed for words. I neglected to post a “WordPressin'” last week. In spite of that, I vow to press on. Let me apologize to my dear, loyal readers. Both of you. (Haha, self-deprecating humor. I exaggerate. I have at least six loyal readers.) Pressin’ on, allow me to impress you.

In the class, we’ve begun our final group project. Kind of. My team and I all agree that there is a final group project, and that we have been assigned to each other to get it done, and that at some point work will be applied to the project, and that’s where we’re at right now.

I Say: Goddamn. Goddamn! : WordPressin’ 4

This article is part of a series! Click…

• Here, for part one;
• Here, for part two;
• Here, for part three

So I must say, this WordPress course with Lorelle is one of the most demanding classes I’ve ever had. Not in terms of the assignments being difficult, but the sheer quantity of work she loads on us is herculean. And none of us are even Hercules. Just like to point that out.

I’m not going to call any student out for complaining. Don’t need to. It’s pretty much a consensus. This course is a ton of goddamn work. We’re not only posting dozens, it seems, of posts and pages to our individual blogs; we also are responsible for turning in articles to the class site on how to use various tools on WordPress. Somehow, this stuff’s getting done without me (one of the first week’s editors) because I haven’t found the time yet to even check out the class site. Articles are dropping into my email, and I merely acknowledge them with a nod or a sigh. The thing is, I have more classes than just this one, and there’s enough to do for Lorelle’s class to make it a full-time job to stay on top of it. I believe that in the future, contributing to the class site by writing articles and editing and all could and should be a class in itself. Maintaining a personal blog and collaborating with other students, which we have just started to do, is plenty of work. Pile on too much, and both endeavors suffer from it.

The thing is, Lorelle Van Fossen is just not like the rest of us mere humans. She claims to post five articles before ten a.m. every day, and we all believe her. And as I said before, she’s very excited about WordPress and sharing it with us.  And we really like her. But it’s getting to be too damn much. (I know I’m writing this post when I could be working on some stuff for class, but I feel an obligation to do a “WordPressin'” post once a week, so I’m doing it.) As I pointed out in a previous installment, we’re like guinea pigs. Test subjects. This curriculum is new. Well, the guinea pigs are starting to squeal and scream.

It’s fun, though. I already thought WordPress was fun before I knew the stuff I know now. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do this, but I’m sneaking in a link to our class site. Just look at it and peruse all the articles and then think about students doing this, their individual blog, and their other classwork, maybe working at a job x hours a week, and trying to live a life. But also know, Lorelle probably does the work of all of us combined to design this course and do all her own stuff as well. Pretty awesome.

I just realized Lorelle’s like a pusher. (In a good way, but still.) And it’s making us all a little crazy and desperate! I ran into one of my classmates in the MacLab on campus yesterday, furiously hacking away at the assignments for this class, and I think smoke was coming out of his ears! It’s a lot of goddamn work, I’ll say again! We’re really being pushed here. The classic song by Steppenwolf, “The Pusher”, comes to mind. The pusher man pushes and pushes and makes you say “Goddamn the Pusher Man.”

Lorelle knows we love her, I think. But she’s going to wear these guinea pigs out! So I gotta say Goddamn, Lorelle. I said Goddamn. Goddamn…..

Read Part Five

Wherein Your Humble Narrator Bitches and Moans: WordPressin’ 3

Entering the fourth week of the WordPress class with Lorelle, I feel I have a tangible growth of technical knowledge about what the WP site can do for a blogger. Normally, tangible growths are not a good thing. But this one seems to be expanding my mind, so we’ll see how it goes.

(This article is in a series! If you missed the first two, click here for part one, and here for part two. Click nothing to continue reading part three….)

Though I’m in my second quarter of Web Dev courses, I still feel more like a writer than a coder. All the programming minutiae are seeping through my layers of tech-idiocy, but its still not intuitive to me. I’m still stuggling to do simple screen captures and the like. So the article I’m working on for our class site is distinctly more text heavy than the other students. Theirs are loaded with snazzy graphics and even animations that I grasp how to do mentally, but wrestle with in practicality. Beginning to wonder if I’m wrong in my approach to this degree.