Backing up your Wordpress blog

December 31, 2014 in How to

It’s a good idea to keep backups of your day-to-day documents, so it makes sense to back up your blog too. In this short series I’m looking at ways to do that. Last time I covered how to back up your blog if you use Blogger, in the article Backing up your Blogger blog. Today, I’ll take you through the process of backing up a blog if you use Wordpress.

Backing up your Blogger blog

December 29, 2014 in Handy hints, How to

What can be worse than losing your beautifully-crafted prose that you’ve published as blog posts? In this short series I’m looking at how you you can try to guard against the inconceivable happening. Today, I’m looking at Blogger. If you have a blog using the Blogger platform, then here’s how to back it up.

Backing up your website or blog

December 28, 2014 in Handy hints, How to

The word “paranoid” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as

“exhibiting unnecessary or extreme fear; characterized by unreasonable or excessive suspicion of others.”

Well, you know the old joke: Just because you're paranoid i doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!

In a similar sort of way, I don’t think there is anything “unreasonable” in being paranoid about losing the content on your website.

Handwriting on the web

November 07, 2014 in Bits & bobs, Creative Writing, How to, Useful websites, Website writing

Pelikan Souverän M600: Handwriting Sample

So, you’d like to use a handwriting font on your website or blog? It’s pretty easy, but you ought to think about the impression you want to create. And perhaps use it sparingly, unlke in this article.

Further thoughts on using Word for Desktop Publishing: Frames

July 29, 2014 in How to, Word

If you have the occasional desktop publishing to do, or if you only require a sort of limited desktop publisher or simply don’t have the time to learn a whole new program, Word will do fine. But, to borrow from Clint Eastwood, a program’s got to know its limitations. In the article Using Word for desktop publishing, I noted that text boxes are good for enabling you to place text anywhere. Furthermore, you can link text boxes, so that if text outgrows its text box, you can make it flow on to another one.

Using Word for desktop publishing

April 06, 2014 in How to, Technology, Word

Can Word be used for desktop publishing? The answer is yes — but only as a last resort. Here’s a summary of my recent experience.

Organising yourself

December 09, 2013 in How to, Technology

The biggest problem facing the would-be writer is getting commissions. I think we all know what it’s like to receive rejection slips. Some of us could even paper our walls with them. The second biggest problem is how to organise yourself to not miss a deadline once you do start to get commissions. The best way, I’ve found, is to use a spreadsheet.

Mind your language! Crosswordese

September 10, 2013 in How to, Language

If, like me, you have a love of language, you should explore the strange world of the cryptic crossword. Unlike the plain crossword, the cryptic variety requires more than providing a synonym for a word or phrase. Rather, it involves working out what the clue is getting at.

That sounds much more difficult than the task facing you in an ordinary crossword, doesn't it? In fact, much of the time it's easier, for one simple reason.

Combining different versions of a document

July 22, 2013 in How to, Professional writer, Word

Suppose you’re in this position: you have created a document. You have sent it to someone else for their comments or to edit it. They have now sent it back to you, but in the meantime you have made some changes to your original. How are you going to sort out this mess?!

If you and your colleague have been using Microsoft Word, then you don’t have a problem. All you need to do is use the Combine Documents feature.

How to create a magazine cover

June 05, 2013 in How to, Web 2.0

I have always liked presenting ideas in the form of a magazine cover. It can act as a stimulating writing prompt for other people, and it can also serve to help you focus on some key ideas. But most of all, it’s just enjoyable in its own right!

Making use of your photographs

May 26, 2013 in How to, Photography, Web 2.0

If, like me, you enjoy taking photographs, then why not use them in your blog posts. An easy way to do so is to open a Flickr account, upload your photos to it, and then use them when you need to.

Flickr is, to be honest, looking a bit long in the tooth, although its recent innovation of displaying very high resolution photographs by default is, shall we say, striking. But it is still a great service in my opinion, and for the writer a much better one than, say, Facebook.

How to incorporate media into your blog or website

January 06, 2013 in How to

The act of incorporating actual pictures, videos or sound recordings or other media – as opposed to just links to them -- into your blog or website is known as 'embedding'.

You've almost certainly already seen examples of embedding. Go to any website where there's a video clip on the page, and you're looking at it in action. In other words, embedding is simply the act of inserting code into a web page or blog that puts the object right there on the page. This 'object' might be a video, a presentation, a document, a picture -- just about anything, in fact.

How to create a blog

January 03, 2013 in How to, Website writing

If you’ve decided that you’d like to blog, or at least that you’d like to dip your toe in the water and see if blogging is for you, you’ll be pleased to know that you don’t have to expend a huge amount of time or effort – or money.

How to recover lost files

December 31, 2012 in How to

In this day and age we are a lot more fortunate than in times past, because we can store manuscripts on a computer, print them out, and make multiple backups. But what if, despite everything, you accidentally delete your prized magnum opus?

How to convert videos to audio files

December 26, 2012 in How to

Let’s face it, a lot of videos don’t have a lot going on in terms of visual stimuli. True, there are those dreadful videos which consist purely of people holding up handwritten notices, accompanied by some awful dirge, and unfortunately you have to watch them if you want to learn what they have to say.

How to remove Babylon from your Firefox browser

December 25, 2012 in How to

Babylon is an insidious program which, once installed, is a devil of a job to get rid of. An online translator, its website boasts “100 million downloads and counting”. I wonder how many of those were intended.

Because the problem is, as you may have had the misfortune to discover from personal experience, is that if you’re not careful you can install Babylon by accident. And once you’ve done so, it can be extremely irritating because one of the effects of having it on your system is that it makes itself the default search engine in the address bar of your browser.

Using the right search engine

June 26, 2012 in Handy hints, How to, Technology

What’s the right search engine to use? The answer is: there isn’t one. Different search engines typically give different results from each other, so your best bet is to carry out the same search in several search engines, not just one.

4 Ways to Write Quickly

November 24, 2011 in How to

“Well, just bash it out. Even if you have to do it all in bullet points and stitch it up later.”

That was Elaine’s response to my comment that I had, in effect, only a few hours in which to write a comparative review of two educational technology products, obtain all the specs, and come up with ratings and an incisive conclusion, and all in 1500 words.

My cup of tea froze halfway to my lips.

“Bash it out?! Stitch it up? I’m not some hack who just churns the stuff out like a machine. I’m a craftsman. Each article is a work of art, each word carefully selected having been hand-picked from the millions of words available. The result is a thing to be admired, savoured, treasured even.”

“You mean like haute couture?”

“Indeed. Exactly so.”

Making your email links more user-friendly

November 01, 2011 in Handy hints, How to

All websites should have easy-to-find contact details. It’s been found that the average time a person will wait for a web page to appear is 8 seconds, before giving up and moving on to another site. If the same holds true for locating information, you need to make sure that visitors can find your details in under 8 seconds.

Bad headlines

February 14, 2011 in How to, News & views, Professional writer

If there’s one thing that really annoys me it’s chapter headings and article headlines where you can’t tell what the subject matter is until you read it. Who needs a situation in which you don’t know if you want to read something until you have read it? The way I look at it is that if the author can’t even be bothered being clear when he’s trying to entice you to read his stuff, why should you be bothered to oblige him by reading it?