When it comes to comments on your blog, do they help or hurt? It’s a question that’s been asked since the beginning of blogging. On one side, you have those who are adamant that comments help you maintain credibility and stay connected to your audience. On the other side...

I’m sitting here writing this article and I’m starting to find a little clarity. Starting to understand why this thing is so hard. This game of entrepreneurship. Shit, this game of life. It’s because the real answer is really found when you’re pulling from opposite directions. I’m sitting here wondering and I just return to the same question which is why? Why, why, why?

Everyone in the world is hoping for one thing. That nobody notices they don’t belong. Everyone in the world suffers from imposter syndrome sooner or later. I can guarantee you, no matter what stage you reach in your life, you’ll be desperately asking yourself how your peers are still ignorant to the fact that you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.

I heard snippets of talk about Gutenberg on WordPress all summer long, but since I was traveling I didn’t have time to really investigate it. Recently, I ran into a fellow WordPresser and she told me that WordPress 5.0 is going to “revolutionize” WordPress. How exactly that would happen, she couldn’t say, but later I began to wonder if it had something to do with the Gutenberg I’d been hearing about.

Is there anything easier than starting your own blog? You can have your site up and running within minutes which is why hundreds of thousands of new blogs are created every day. But how many of them stay in business 6 months or a year down the road? Not many. As soon as the early excitement of starting a new blog fades away, most newbies find it difficult to come to grips with the demands of blogging.

And this is pervasive throughout some of our greatest stories, fairy tales, and myths.

WordPress 4.8.2 is available for download and users are encouraged to update as soon as possible. This release patches eight security vulnerabilities and has six maintenance related fixes.

There are more unfinished novels, blog posts, and job proposals on my laptop than I’d care to admit. I know I’m not the only one guilty of this.

There is a very popular myth in the field of social media marketing that many buy into because it’s a simple way to shift the blame from yourself onto the monetization dynamics of the platforms you use. That myth is the belief that as long as your product, service, or idea is good enough, it will automatically gain massive traction on social media if only you’re consistent with your content output. “Built it and they will come.” In a perfect world this would very well be the case, but as we all know, consumers today are more withholding with their attention than they’ve ever been at any given point in history.

You’re a better writer than you let on. Most of us trying to write to gain an audience, inspire people, market ourselves, etc. are all doing it wrong. We stick with the education and rules we learned in high school and college: “Don’t end sentences with prepositions.” “Don’t start sentences with conjugations.” “Sentences have subjects and predicates.” We focus on the perfect paragraph and essay structure.

This is a bad day for the W3C: it's the day it publishes a standard designed to control, rather than empower, web users. That standard that was explicitly published without any protections -- even the most minimal compromise was rejected without discussion, an intransigence that the W3C leadership tacitly approved. It's the day that the W3C changed its process to reward stonewalling over compromise, provided those doing the stonewalling are the biggest corporations in the consortium.

As a firm believer in the notion that knowledge shared sincerely with others becomes wisdom, I've reflected on the life lessons I've learnt from blogging.

The difference between good writers and bad writers has little to do with skill. It has to do with perseverance. Bad writers quit. Good writers keep going. That’s all there is to it.

YouTube is full of videos ready to be consumed by WordPress addicts. Here is a list of ten YouTube channels for WordPress users curated by us.

I’ve been hitting a cold hard wall a few days straight now. Creativity-wise. At times like these, inspiration is always the hardest friend to find. I tried everything. I read articles on inspiration, listened to “California Love” on a loop (which is my go-to song for any moment shitty), watched YouTube videos that people swore their family heirlooms by, and — last but not least — banged my head against my bedroom wall. Nothing worked.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” For a long time I thought I understood this quote. It’s so straightforward, there seems little room for misinterpretation. And yet, there is. See, for many years, I thought Lao Tzu was saying that every journey begins with that first, single physical step. We put a foot out in front of us, lean forward slight, and then whoosh! Away we go.

In the midst of failure when you're feeling so shitty and so awful, how do you actually gain positivity and move forward?

Instagram ‘influencers’ told to clarify paid-for ads, while health claims are taken down after advertising breaches

When you attempt to envision a writer, I imagine many of you see a quirky recluse, hunched over a desk in some cabin, crumpled paper strewn about as they obsessively work on the next great American novel. But writing is so much more. Prose is thought put to page, which makes all of us writers, even if we don’t have the chops to tangle with Faulkner. In most cases, writing is most useful as a tool for thinking, expression, and creativity; cabin-dwelling novelists be damned.

You aren’t entitled to a single reader. You aren’t entitled to a single customer, viewer, audience member or anything else. As a creative, you are doing creative work in the hope that people will consume it. But you can’t demand their attention. The people with the potential to enjoy what you do are busy. They’re distracted. They have a hundred things they could be doing at any given moment.

This morning, I woke up at 5am and turned coffee on. I sat there in silence for a few as it brewed, as I usually do. Typically I use that time to see the day I have in front of me, to mentally lay out what I’d like to do with it. Shortly there after, I usually begin reading for a few minutes just to get my mind moving. I usually go with something positive or spiritual. From there I usually know if I’d rather sit and write or go for my run first.

According to a survey by Curata, 42.5% of companies increased their content marketing staff levels in 2016. It makes sense that the content marketing industry is taking off. Content marketing costs less than traditional marketing yet generates 3x more leads. In fact, blogging is one of the best ways to drive inbound traffic and convert visitors into…

Seize this opportunity to show your website is a helpful resource. Just make sure you do it in a strategic way that doesn’t disrupt a reader’s experience.

The dust has settled since Medium’s most recent business pivot. Now, its founder is once again trying to explain what Medium is.

How's your newsletter doing? Not as well as you'd like? Here are seven common newsletter problems you may be having—and how to solve them.

I get it. You have to fail your way to success. That’s what everybody out there says. But what they usually don’t tell you is how you’re going to feel after each failure. How every single time you fail at something it’s like a piece inside of you is dying. No one tells you how you’re going to lose hope over time. How you’re going to fall apart. Little by little.

Is your content great, but not ranking? Columnist Kristopher Jones shares some of the more common SEO errors bloggers and content marketers make.

I went out on a limb and contacted some of my greatest blogging idols to see if a few of them might like to lend us some of their wisdom in response to the one question we’re all thinking about: how the hell did you get so many followers?

Want your blog to be successful? Then stop focusing on 'vanity' blog metrics such as page views, sessions and visitors. Here's what you need to do instead.

Ready to establish your brand's presence on Pinterest? Here's a guide to setting up your account, posting your content, and growing your audience.

Most people don’t believe me when I say that I write 10,000 words per day, every day.

Parents are posting photos of their children on social media to build their personal brand and boost their role as influencers, Murdoch University researcher Dr Catherine Archer has warned.

Opinion: Facebook and Google's growing power has spurred calls to decentralize the web.

Do you struggle to post to your blog regularly? Is it hard to keep your idea bucket so full you never worry about having something to say? If you’ve been plagued with writer’s block and find yourself wondering why you ever started blogging, have I got good news for you!