October 2016 - Writing Without Waffle

Beginner’s guide to WordPress

According to Wikipedia, WordPress was used by more than 26.4% of the top 10 million websites by April 2016. That’s more than a quarter of the world’s websites, including this one.

You can use it to run a blog or even a whole website, whether or not that website includes a blog.

In WordPress jargon, ‘posts’ go on your blog (one long page with the most recent post at the top), and ‘pages’ are static.

There are thousands of options so you can make your site look and behave exactly as you want. But it’s a target for hackers. If you don’t want to unexpectedly find your site selling Viagra or promoting the Bristol Gerbil Society, it’s wise to do regular updates that add the latest security patches.

There are two flavours of WordPress. Both are free. Yes, free! Confusingly, both have the same name.

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By Jackie Barrie, 7 years2 years ago

Writing Without Waffle

Are you writing for humans or spiders?

Human beings search the internet for specific ecommerce products, information and/or entertainment. Search engine spiders crawl the internet looking for content to match the search phrase that has been typed in (because it’s the World Wide Web, ha ha!). Before you write each blog post, you need to decide on Read more…

By Jackie Barrie, 7 years2 years ago

Writing Without Waffle

The day I went to an improv workshop and fell in love.

It was December 2014. I was at PSA London. And John Cremer was running an improv workshop.

At the start of the session, he said something like: “At the end of the session, four people will improvise a play, totally unscripted, and it will be brilliant and hilarious.”

I thought to myself: “I’d never do that in a million years.”

We played some improv games including one-word storytelling and three-line scenes, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. “I can do this,” I thought. “This is just like the games we play as a family every Christmas.”

How restful and relaxing it was to turn off the bit of my brain that edits everything I say and do. What a joy to unleash the playful part of myself. What a delight to let go and laugh and have fun in a completely professional setting.

We got to the end of the session, and it was time for the play. I’d completely forgotten about that.

Three volunteers sat on the chairs John had placed at the front of the room.

I was stunned when my legs disconnected from my brain, and walked me up to sit on the fourth chair. My face was frozen with fear. My mind was shrieking: “What the f*** do you think you’re doing?!”

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By Jackie Barrie, 7 years2 years ago