I recently spent some time analyzing Perishable Press pages as they appear in the search results for Google, Bing, et al. Google Webmaster Tools provides a wealth of information about crawl errors, as well as the URLs of any pages that link to missing content. Combined with your site’s access/error logs, you have everything needed to track down 404 errors and clean up your listings in the search engine results. • Read more »
Perishable Press
WordPress, Web Design, Code & Tutorials
Better Robots.txt Rules for WordPress
Cleaning up my files during the recent redesign, I realized that several years had somehow passed since the last time I even looked at the site’s robots.txt file. I guess that’s a good thing, but with all of the changes to site structure and content, it was time again for a delightful romp through robots.txt. • Read more »
Online Tools for DNS, CHMOD, Data URLs
I’ve always liked the idea of having an “Asides” category for links, notes, and other miscellaneous debris. So here is the first aside post, classified in the newly established asides tag (woo-hoo!). Here are three awesome tools to optimize your workflow. • Read more »
5G Firewall Beta
Update 2012/01/25 — Official release version: 5G Blacklist 2012. The beta version provided in this post is now for reference only. Updating the 4G Blacklist, the new 5G Firewall is now open for beta testing. The new code is better than ever, providing wider protection with less code and fewer false positives. I’ve had much success with this new firewall, but more testing is needed to ensure maximum compatibility and minimal issues. • Read more »
Welcome to the Old Site
After many weeks of hellish labor, Perishable Press is redesigned with some significant changes to the main structure of the site. Before the 2011 renovation, the site operated from a subdirectory WordPress installation in the following location: • Read more »
What a Malicious Server Scan Looks Like
Like most sites on the Web, Perishable Press is scanned constantly by malicious scripts looking for vulnerabilities and exploit opportunities. There is no end to the type and variety of malicious URL requests. It all depends on the script, the target, and the goal of the attack. Malicious scripts generally seek one of two things: • Read more »
Yoast WP SEO vs All in One SEO
While setting things up here at the new site (new WP install), I’m trying to keep the custom functions and plugins down to a minimum. Seriously, if I don’t absolutely need it – if there is just no other way to do something – then no, I’m not going to install it. So far, I am using only the following plugins for the new WP install: Akismet WP-phpMyAdmin All in One SEO Pack My theory is that [...] • Read more »
Simple IP-Detection Bad for SEO
In general, Perishable Press enjoys generous ranking in Google’s search-engine results. The site’s many pages bring in lots of traffic for some great keywords, and a direct search for “Perishable Press” returns the first spot, with eight featured site links even. And recently, after switching servers, traffic increased even further. Things were going well, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally renovate and redesign the site. So I dive in.. And then approximately 24-48 hours [...] • Read more »
Site Redesign Pre-Launch
SO… Welcome to the new design! Well, sort of.. What you’re seeing now is the “Quantify Theme”, a new WordPress theme designed for the technical/web-design writer with an eye for detail. This theme serves as the starting point for the new Perishable Press redesign and site overhaul. I was going to keep everything private during development, but the strangest things can happen.. • Read more »
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! • Read more »
Switching from PC to Mac
I finally made the switch from PC to Mac. My previous machine was an old Sony Vaio purchased in 2005. It was top of the line then, and actually worked great until about a year ago, when it inevitably began dying a slow, complicated death. The time to finally buy a new computer was fast approaching.. • Read more »
Notes on Switching Servers
Switching servers & migrating sites can be a HUGE deal (or not), depending on things like: Number of sites to transfer Size and complexity of sites Who is hosting your sites Experience I recently did this, switching from a 3-year run at ASO to my new home at Media Temple. Total of 24 properties, with WordPress running on around 10 sites. Past experience with VPS servers really had me paranoid about running out of memory. A few [...] • Read more »
Switching to New Server
Just a note that PerishablePress.com will be migrating to its new home at Media Temple. Thanks for your patience as the DNS propagates. If you encounter anything seriously weird, like unexpected errors or anything, please comment on this post or send an email. As always, thank you for your help. Okay – here goes nothin’! • Read more »
Canonical URLs and Subdomains with Plesk
I am in the process of migrating my sites from A Small Orange to Media Temple. Part of that process involves canonicalizing domain URLs to help maximize SEO strategy. At ASO, URL canonicalization required just a few htaccess directives: # enforce no www prefix <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.tld$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L] </ifmodule> When placed in the web-accessible root directory’s htaccess file, that snippet will ensure that all requests for your site are not prefixed [...] • Read more »
Recent Drama, News, and Other Stuff
Okay so it’s been awhile. That’s a good thing because it means I’m busy. But it also sucks because life moves too fast to blog about everything that happens. Especially with web design: you get started blogging about your discoveries, and then you find yourself learning and doing too much to post or tweet about even just the big stuff. But now I have some time to write and share some of the awesome and insane things [...] • Read more »
HTTP Headers for ZIP File Downloads
You know when you you’re working on a project and get stuck on something, so you scour the Web for solutions only to find that everyone else seems to be experiencing the exact same thing. Then, after many hours trying everything possible, you finally stumble onto something that seems to work. This time, the project was setting up a secure downloads area for Digging into WordPress. And when I finally discovered a solution, I told myself that [...] • Read more »