Michael McCallister

TweetSolved my “blank pages” problem rather easily. As I suspected, the issue appears to have been a wonky plugin. Turning off all my plugins restored the Pages back to normal. I went to the Recently Active tab on the Plugins admin page. My SharePress plugin (coincidentally?) had an update available. Installed the update and activated [...]

TweetJust discovered that static pages (Books, Contact, Bio) on the site are currently not working. I am trying to determine the source of the problem, and hope to get things back to normal soon. Feel free to read posts here, and at Notes from the Metaverse (see the sidebar on the right!).

TweetMy latest article on balancing full-time work with writing books and still having a life to speak of is at TechWhirl.com. This piece is a followup to my Adventures in Publishing article, and filled with tips and personal experience for the writer crazy enough to adopt my lifestyle. Technical Communications Juggler: Balancing Work, Life and [...]

TweetWriters are insecure people, as a general rule. This is one of the reasons so many prizes and awards are handed out to writers in any given year. In the realm of technical communication, there really aren’t many ways to measure success. There are no Pulitzer or Nobel Prizes in our field. For those of [...]

Tweet If you’re a technical communicator of any standing, you’ve probably heard of the longstanding TechWr-L (short for Tech Writer) mailing list. With a pair of new owners, the already-lively list has just a bit more life. One of the signs of that new life is TechWhirl.com, the list’s newly relaunched website. It runs on [...]

TweetA quick note to tell you that the second edition of WordPress in Depth is starting to appear in better bookstores everywhere, and of course all the usual online sources. The book covers WordPress version 3.1, and has about 100 pages of new material compared to the first edition. Bud Smith and I are really [...]

TweetYou may know that I’m a technical writer by profession. I wrote a brief account of my “Adventures in Publishing: Finding a Gig as a Computer-Book Author” for the webzine associated with the venerable Technical Writing mailing list (TechWr-L). You may find it interesting.

Tweet Getting ready to pack up the laptop and head west. I’m spending the next few days in Sacramento, California,  at the annual Technical Communication Summit. This three-day conference sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication is packed full of sessions that I hope will make me a better writer. Among the topics I’ll be [...]

Tweet Image by Getty Images via @daylife Had a great time talking about What’s New in WordPress 3.1 at the Web414 “Ultimate WordPress Showdown” Thursday. It wasn’t as pugnacious as it sounds, though. Scott Offord from OrionWeb demonstrated listing child pages, custom fields for arrays, and a couple SEO-oriented plugins (slides here). Jeramey Jannene made a simple [...]