Category Archives: web

Six Years of Write Techie

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Believe it or not, May 22, 2011 was the day I launched writetechie.com! It has been a wonderful journey developing this website on WordPress. My first post, Post-STC 2011 Summit, reflected on the Society for Technical Communication 2011 Annual Summit held in Sacramento, California.

I celebrated my first year anniversary with a followup post with some analytics. As customary, here’s the rundown of stats from May 2016 to April 2017.

Analytics

  • Number of Sessions: 5,592
  • Unique User: 5,346
  • Page Views: 6,216

Most Visited by Country

  • United States
  • India
  • United Kingdom
  • Canada
  • Australia

Most Visited by State

  • California
  • Texas
  • New York
  • Florida
  • Georgia

Top Most Visited Pages

Technology Changes Throughout the Years

Some of the most major changes have been under the hood with my website. For most, I moved to my third web hosting company since launching my site in 2011. Lessons learned from my first website meltdown, a site revamp and theme template refresh, and moving towards using HTTPS.

My first attempt through HTTPS was ad-hoc and not exactly a correct implementation of HTTPS. It was through CloudFlare and was a total mess with my non-HTTPS web hosting provider. In order to make the move to an HTTPS environment, I had to pony up more money to my (now former) hosting provider to allow certificates and buy my own certificate OR move to a web hosting provider that has HTTPS capability as a standard feature.

I understand that my website is my playground to test new things, make revisions, and improve my skills with web content and WordPress skills. I was a complete novice using WordPress before launching writetechie.com. What I knew about WordPress was through the (now defunct) STC New Mexico Kachina Chapter.

Slowly I’m putting more effort into my website and I’m ready to share more about my experience I’ve had with content strategy and web content over the last couple of years. I felt there was an embargo on what I could share about my experience and I think it’s time for me to share what I’ve learned over these few years. In addition, I have a better perspective about some of the things I’ve been doing. Lastly, I think I’ve broken my “writer’s block” on writing articles for my blog because of my experience writing for my master of science courses.

Look Forward for More

In the next few months, I’ll be back to writing some rather refreshing articles about the field. I’m back with some exciting stuff I want to share. I also want to play with my new screencasting tool and make some fun documentation videos.

Writing for the Web – Simplify Your Words!

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What does writing for the web mean? Do we write in a way that is simple for anyone to understand? I keep going back to my technical communication college days and wonder what it means to write and I go back to my first technical writing job that I had which I was introduced to Plain Language writing style.

What I learned from understanding Plain Language: write stupidly simple. Why? The internet is not entirely a formal place for communication and most of the time its to share information.

Nowadays, I think that effective communication should be simple, easy, short, and to the point. Does that mean I’m lazy? Can I use complex language to transfer my knowledge to someone else or can I use simple words to get my point across? You be the judge of that last sentence.

Even during WWII, Winston Churchill wrote a memo which asked for simpler language when communicating within his team. He wanted short and crisp messages, include headers, and remove “wolly” phrases because he felt it was merely padding. Why? He didn’t want his staff to waste time reading long reports when there is a war going on.

Getting back to web writing: there is a lot of stuff written out there for anything. As a technical writer, how can we simplify what we write? Rewrite a sentence? Make it easier to understand? Can we save someone’s reading time?

My job these days is to convince stakeholders that easier and simpler content will make their jobs easier and their customers fully figure out a process without stopping in the office or making a phone call. [Edit–I had an entire paragraph written before writing this next one] Basically I help remove complexity, make stakeholders happy, and customers happy.

Drilling down to my point: make your job easier to make your reader’s job easier with clear content.

My recommendation is check out Marcia Riefer Johnston’s books, Word Up! and You Can Say That Again. These books are great resources to improve your writing skills. 🙂