All posts by Paula Carlson

Wordpress

WordPress owns me

I am totally obsessed with WordPress right now. We recently launched this website at work, which was built by a vendor instead of in-house, and yo, it’s amazing. They built it in WordPress, and it does stuff I had no idea WordPress could do, and it’s inspired me to LEARN ALL THE WORDPRESS THINGS. I’ve been reading [amazon_link id=”1119995965″ target=”_blank” ]Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)[/amazon_link], and WP tutorials and articles on Smashing Magazine; outlining plans for possible projects; and browsing through plugins for ideas. I fixed a couple of lingering problems on the blog at work yesterday, which was AWESOME.

Problem is, I need more blogs to experiment on. I had some cool ideas for one of my sites, but the stakeholder doesn’t want me making any changes right now because she doesn’t have time to review and approve for awhile, which makes me sad. I’m considering building a bug/ticket tracker for projects at work. There’s no guarantee I could get everyone to actually use it, but it’d be a fun and educational experience, and if I could figure out how to build it as a customizable theme to release to the public, that’d be even better.

Seriously, WordPress excites me like nothing work-related has for a long time. It feels good.

ETA: For some reason this link isn’t working above, so here it is again:
[amazon_link id=”1119995965″ target=”_blank” ]Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)[/amazon_link]

Wordpress

Can’t find your newly created user in your WordPress user list?

Yeah, that just happened to my colleague SS. For future reference, this is where I found the solution:

Users not showing in user list…

In a nutshell, I had to use “wp-admin/user-edit.php?user_id=###”, searching until I found the missing user (in my case, user 155). Then I was able to edit her role, which had not been assigned, thereby adding her to the user list.

Social Media, Teaching

Do I even know what I’m talking about? Sometimes.

Last week I was in Houston for a conference, where I taught a workshop/tutorial on how to create a WordPress blog, and presented at another workshop on how to attract an audience to your blog.

The first one was a piece of cake–I could create a dozen WordPress blogs in an hour, and be watching TV while I’m doing it. Part of me felt like a big fake for the second one, though–I have few if any followers on any of my blogs. I’m ok with that, since it’s not my job to get readers (I just like to ‘talk’), but if I needed to, I know how it’s done. I’ve been swimming in the social media pool since before it was ever called social media. I know what attracts readers, and what keeps them, because I’ve been sucked into blogs, websites and posting boards….and I’ve left them. I’ve been anonymous, and I’ve had followers–I’ve even given an autograph or two in my lifetime.

I didn’t say any of that at the workshop, I just let them all assume I knew what I was talking about, because in actuality, I do. I’ve just never put it to the test.

Also in Houston, I saw bats. A quarter million of them. It was pretty awesome.