About | Mark Ratledge .com

I’m a journalist and non-fiction writer in Montana; and I work as a WordPress developer for clients in Montana and around the world.

WordPress: Read more about my WordPress work and check my online technology profiles: WordPress.org; StackOverflow; WordPress Development; and Upwork. I work with WooCommerce, Genesis themes and Twig/Timber, Google tools, MemberPress and Event Espresso, CiviCRM and Advanced Custom Fields (ACF); I do Linux server administration, and use WP Engine, Linode, Liquid Web Pantheon; and I handle migrations to WordPress from other platforms, such as Joomla, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, phpBB, Hubspot, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger, Wild Apricot, and from “plain” PHP & MySQL sites.

My articles include The Burial of Elouise Cobell in High Country News; a humor piece in McSweeney’s called Back in the Good Old Days, We Had Facts; a piece on Christian Kerodin’s Armed Citadel in Idaho and his Fantasy Novels; and the 2010 Blackfeet Bear River (Baker – Marias) Massacre Memorial in Montana. I wrote a long series of pieces called State of the Arts Tech Talk for the Montana Arts Council. My 2008-2011 archived Missoulian columns include my 225-odd Sunday Tech columns and some InBusinessMonthly articles. And I used to write Mac Q & A for Mac and OS X users in Montana.

I’m active in the arts and humanities in Montana, and served as vice-chair of the Montana Cultural and Aesthetic Trust from 2006 to 2013. I’ve received grants from the Montana Arts Council, including an individual fellowship in Photography; from Humanities Montana for writing and research; from Ucross Foundation for a writer’s residency; and a Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Independent Scholar grant.

I engineered and produced a set of CDs titled Eat Stone and Go On: The Recorded Poetry of Richard Hugo, funded by Humanities Montana and individuals. The CDs were distributed free to public libraries and schools around the state of Montana.

I’m a faculty affiliate in the University of Montana-Missoula’s Department of English and have taught composition and introductory literature classes. I also taught an Introductory Information Technology class in the Department of Computer Science. I taught creative writing in the Wilderness and Civilization Program in the Department of Forestry at UM, and I’ve taught photography in high schools through the Montana Art Council.