Working and learning
To put it simply, three main things keep a website live and browsable on the internet. These are: An active domain name aka the name of the site (e.g., mywebsite.com) A nameserver containing domain name system (DNS) records. DNS records are database records that map a URL to an IP address. Every URL contains a … Read more
A client’s ticket said that she couldn’t access her WordPress admin panel (domain.tld/wp-admin), as it was giving her a 500 error. Unfortunately, this is a generic error that could be caused by anything. Our Support Team was seeing this error as well. Here are the steps I took to fix the issue: Common causes and … Read more
Joey and I took a two-week hiatus from boxing to focus on grief, work, and other things. But we’re ready to hit the heavy bags again. This Saturday, we participated in the All Levels Boxing Technique at our boxing club, Impact Boxing & Fitness. Though we were probably the only beginners that day, we managed … Read more
When I began working in tech support, I relied on our knowledge base to get me through. If no one was around and I didn’t know the answer to a customer’s question, I’d scour the documentation for clues. I usually found what I was looking for, saving time and sanity. “No one should be a … Read more
Calgary rests 1,048 metres above sea level. This high altitude results in low air pressure, which makes cooking a wee bit longer than I’m used to. I honestly forgot about this when I moved here, so the first time my hard-boiled eggs came out soft came as a surprise. Back in Vancouver, I had it … Read more
Lists are common in technical writing. One of my duties is to instruct readers on what to do, step-by-step. Writing lists may seem easy, but I’ve seen a lot of manuals that ignore parallel sentences, emphasize words randomly, and forget punctuation. Bad example of a list These milk frother instructions came from a Nespresso Aeroccino manual. … Read more
A member of the Write the Docs Slack community asked for advice on designing buttons in a user guide. Her three options were: Quotes (e.g., Click “OK”) Brackets (e.g., Click [OK]) Bold font (e.g., Click OK) Everyone who responded advised the writer to use option three. This also corresponds to Microsoft Style Guide’s short article about the button. … Read more
In our Write the Docs Slack network, a member asked if we knew of any best practices on using the word “recommend” in technical documents. There are no official best practices, so we all had different suggestions, such as: Use sparingly, but when you do, state why you’re recommending it so users can decide if … Read more
I’m contributing to an open-source project on GitHub called Awesome, a curated list of interesting topics and their resources. Famous open-sourcer Sindre Sorhus wants help in writing descriptions for each item on the list, so I created a pull request for programming languages in the list. I thought my contributions would be helpful. Not quite. Mistake … Read more
While browsing through a tutorial online, I came across a link that said, “View guide.” The guide could have been a video or an article. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Since I was sitting in a quiet café without my headphones, I hesitated to click the link in case it was a video tutorial. … Read more