Perishable Press Redesign 2008

Published Wednesday, October 1, 2008 @ 4:51 pm • 32 Responses

New design in effect at Perishable Press. With this 17th incarnation of the site, I drew heavily upon psychedelic influences, spiked it with the essence of the previous dark minimalist theme, and mixed in a healthy dose of cutting-edge JavaScript and PHP functionality.

I will be writing more on the details of the new design very soon. In the meantime, I encourage you to check things out and let me know what you think. For this design, I went to great lengths to ensure pixel-perfect precision across platforms and on all browsers, so please let me know if something looks out of place on your particular configuration. As you can see, the design employs a great deal of carefully positioned background images and other elements, so I wouldn’t be surprised to discover display issues on untested systems. Needless to say, for the next few weeks, I will be combing through the archives and checking old posts on different browsers to see if anything looks freaky, and will also be keeping an eye out for any inconsistencies, errors, etc. Please contact me (or leave a comment) with any reports of functional or aesthetic misconduct. ;)

Let me know what you think!


Dialogue

32 Responses Jump to comment form

1Peter Wallhead

October 1, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Hi there,

My only comment would be that it might be a good idea to shrink your header element by around 100pixels in height. This will make it easier and simpler for readers to reach your content with scrolling down the page so much.

You could also possibly reduce the total page width by around 30pixels (or set the page width to 100% instead of a particular pixel dimension) to reduce the need for some users with smaller screens having to scroll across the page to reach the sidebar content.

2Ryan Williams

October 1, 2008 at 5:43 pm

Yes, unfortunately the site does have a horizontal scrollbar on 1024×768 — shouldn’t need to reduce it by much to fix this, but of course I have no idea what’s going on beneath the hood. ;)

Great job, though. I’m too tired to elaborate, but this just generally looks nice; I actually thought flowers rather than psychedelia when I first saw it. It’s much more readable than the previous design IMO, and you’ve made excellent use of the space — have to love the JavaScript horizontal thingy. :)

3Sumesh

October 1, 2008 at 11:25 pm

Beautiful redesign, Jeff.

Just one thing- make the content and sidebar columns more opaque - right now, the background is showing through, a bit too much….

4Bleyder

October 2, 2008 at 4:51 am

Yes, great design!!!

I agree with Sumesh, make content and sidebar columns more opaque. And you would change the width of the columns: 70% main column and 30% side column.

5Donace

October 2, 2008 at 8:20 am

Very nice man, only issues i could see were as mentioned, stretches width by ‘ ‘ that much.

Looks get though and woud love to see the engine :p

6archondigital

October 2, 2008 at 3:05 pm

The new design is great and plays well on my screen which is pretty wide.

My only concern is for viewing at 1024 screen width other than that the whole thing rocks!

Also just did a redesign of my theme but not as elegant as what you just did here.

7Erika

October 2, 2008 at 4:19 pm

Oh, Jeff! I love it!!! Maybe you’re more hippy than I thought. LOL.

8Kuntal

October 3, 2008 at 6:31 am

Hey Jeff,
This is Kuntal. Hi, Congrats on implementing the new look n feel. :-)
However, i loved the previous design, that was one of the unique ones (the day-night feature of that theme.

Hmm yeah this new theme give you a lot of scope and space to use other widgets. thats the nice thing about this one.

9sushant

October 3, 2008 at 6:44 am

Hi Jeff, That’s good work here, but original one had it’s own feel ;
No doubt on that one.
No this one is good too, but looks too girly :)
By d way Great Job Only u could do this.

10Louis

October 3, 2008 at 9:50 am

Gosh, what a shock! I came here to respond to a commenter, and BAM, the new design hits me in the face.

I like it :)

I like how it fits with the image I have of yourself. It’s both impressive and mysterious; it’s like fractals indeed: it’s melting contemplation and reflexion. The background is always visible because of the transparency, but the best moment is when you scroll to the top, and the logo is onto the background. Then, it’s fantastic. I do love that moment. Also, it’s evoking something mystic or religious to me — I always thought that PP was some kind of temple.

Now, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t criticise this new design, so here comes the technical comment.

— the first thing that I noticed once the first shock was over, is that the transparency of everything makes the scrolling laggy. It’s a common issue I guess; I’ve noticed it many times on many websites: a fixed background + numerous transparencies = slow and laggy scroll down. I’m on a laptop at the moment, and that sure adds to the problem, but I think it will still be laggy on my real computer, alas. It’s very unpleasing, but the website remains readable though.

— a little detail now that is bothering me a lot: the RSS readers count is not rounded! What exactly is “701.74 Subscribers”? That’s scandalous coming from you Jeff :p

— a very good point now: the rapid access navigational blocks. I love these! Very nice idea and perfect implementation. You should’ve used Mootools though, but I forgive you :)
Also, I would group the two “useful stuff” blocks together: they belong together.

— without JS, the search page URL are not pretty as when JS is on. http://perishablepress.com/press/search/xwc/ becomes http://perishablepress.com/press/index.php?s=xwc. Really a detail. Also, I miss a validation button; I don’t like typing a search phrase, then taking my mouse to validate, only to find that there’s no “OK” or “Send” button. Would be more accessible.

— another little thing: Firebugs throw me this error on this very page: “document.getElementById(”xClock”) is null”. Seems like you don’t test the existence of this element before applying JS on it :p

— the comments area is correct, but where are my quicktags!? Grrrr!

— I’m really, really proud of what you did about the images optimisation — I just read your Tumblr post about that. You make very few HTTP requests, that’s awesome. Though, I wonder why you are making an extra request just to load a comment-only CSS file (http://perishablepress.com/press/…/mobile.css), and another extra request using the awful @import for the main CSS file. I don’t get it.

— on the “sidebar” again. Though I like the navigational blocks a lot, I have to say that I find the rest of the bar annoying. It creates a lot of noise while reading a post. I would remove everything below the Twitter statut block (I would meaning “I would if I got your FTP login informations” :D)

— a final note, but not the least: I do not like the type used on the main content. I find this font very bold and ugly. In the contrary, your Tumblr blog has a neat typography – though I find the contrast between the background and the font colour too violent.

— oh, and the footer is very classy =)

I hope these remarks help you make PP even better. I sure love this new design. I will miss the dark one, but not as much as I thought; you surprised me with this little wonder.

Congratz Jeff!

11Trav

October 3, 2008 at 1:26 pm

Awesome Jeff!

It’s like a dream I had once- no wait, that was real… nevermind: )

Well done, and renders pretty nice even in IE6!

Trav

12Kim Woodbridge

October 3, 2008 at 9:21 pm

I think it’s gorgeous - I am so impressed. And maybe I can convince you to design one for me ;-)

13Todd

October 4, 2008 at 11:41 am

All I can say is WOW! I love it! I don’t think it looks too girly!

14Donace

October 5, 2008 at 11:35 am

reading a few more articles on the site, and i cam up with a few more points to note;

> its slower in firefox? for me when scrolling It super stagnated, it may be my army of plugins though i thought i’d mention it…it seems fine in IE though.

>gravtar / threaded comment support - always useful to have those two :p

>Big social media buttons - traffic is always nice to have currently im experimenting on thenexus by putting large icons to the big Social platforms and so far have got a good reaction. i feel having those in / near the post would make things easier to submitters who may not have the inclination to hit the ‘bookmark’ button and look for the social site.

>possibly have all the ‘perishable on’ tabbed like the above ares.

thats all for now :p

15Jeff Starr

October 5, 2008 at 3:16 pm

Thank you everyone for your excellent feedback! Overall, it sounds like the new design is an improvement over the previous one, but as many of you point out, there are some great ways to improve it. I am writing an article discussing many of these ideas and concerns in detail, and should have it posted here within the next couple of days. In the meantime, allow me to address some of my favorite points offered here in the comments of this post.

@Peter Wallhead: the width of the design is pretty much set for now (due to time constraints), but I love the idea of reducing the height of the header area by around 100 pixels or so. Great idea. I will be implementing it soon! :)

@Ryan Williams: thanks for the feedback; I am glad the design is to your liking. The width of the design was a conscious decision based upon my bias toward large screens. My bad. It will take a lot to change it, but eventually I probably will. Btw, flowers can be very psychedelic ;)

@Sumesh: yes, good call on the opacity of the content and sidebar panels; they actually display “just right” on my PC monitor, but they do seem a little too transparent on my Mac screen. In either case, I will definitely be working on this. Thank you!

@Bleyder: content versus sidebar width is another good call. The current column dimensions were intentional, but may have been prematurely calculated. As previously mentioned, changing the width of the site or of the columns will require a bit of work (i.e., time), but it is certainly on the list..

@Donace: thank you! I am beginning to think that I should share some WordPress/PHP code along with the new design! ;)

@archondigital: thanks for the feedback! I really like your site’s design as well — very inspiring!

@Erika: how much of a “hippy” did you think I was in the first place? ;)

@Kuntal: thanks for the kind words about my previous theme, Kuntal. Of course, it is still available via the “Switch theme” footer link (look for the “Dark minimalism” link). Either way, thanks for dropping by to check it out.

@sushant: “too girly”? I take that as a compliment! ;)

@Louis: Of course, I am glad you like the new design. As mentioned in previous comments, you are one of the fiercest critics I know, always taking the time to articulate a critical response. I remember thinking, at various points while redesigning, things like, “Oh no, Louis will hate that,” or “That’s probably good enough for Louis (I hope)..” So I am greatly pleased that you enjoy the new look and feel of the site. That said, permit me to address a few of your points..

The display/rendering latency while scrolling is something that I cannot control. I wish I could, but this design centers around transparency. If you (or anyone) has any workarounds for this, please share. As for the subscriber count, that decimal value represents you, Louis (just kidding!). Thanks for the heads up on the x/yClock JavaScript — I am fixing that after this comment. And, I realize that the sliding panels belong together, but the layout prevented a pleasing link arrangement, so I decided to segregate them. And, I will probably add a search submit button and comment quicktags as time allows (I think they would benefit the site).

For the CSS links, that is a bit trickier. There are certain design/display goals that I am trying to achieve — and I thought I had devised the best solution — but your comment made me think a little more about it, and I think I can accomplish my CSS-delivery goals without relying on the extra @import directive.

And, I am glad that you don’t have my FTP/login information! You have got to be kidding me! I see how you might think that the sidebar is too much, but I will have to come to that realization myself after spending some time using the new design. The same is true for the fonts used in the design; I know that the boldface Trebuchet is too fat-looking, and plan on changing it soon (i.e., h3 and dt headings), but the body text is currently to my liking, so it stays (for now).

And finally, I figured you would enjoy the footer — glad to hear that I was correct in that assumption. ;)

16Jeff Starr

October 5, 2008 at 3:27 pm

After posting that previous (long) comment, I notice something else that I need to improve: the readability of the comments paragraph text. I think more spacing between the paragraphs would help, as would a slightly (slightly!) darker font color. I would also like to add a span style to highlight the @someones used for addressing specific commentators.

17Jeff Starr

October 5, 2008 at 3:36 pm

@Trav: I used to have those dreams, er.. experiences all the time! And, I have to agree with you about how the site looks in IE6 — very inspiring!

@Kim: thank you! I am glad you like it! As for getting a design like this for your own site, you know I am for hire! ;)

@Todd: I have to agree, but not because there is anything wrong with teh “girly” stuff.. ;)

@Donace: you are correct that the site renders a little slower in Firefox. On Safari, IE, and other browsers, everything displays smoothly, but for some reason, Firefox chokes on heavy transparencies and fixed background images. Gravatars and threaded comments are great ideas; I will probably implement one or both of these features. As for the social-media buttons, that is another good idea, but I need to think carefully about where to place the icons. Thanks for the additional ideas! Cheers!

18archondigital

October 5, 2008 at 3:50 pm

I used your articles as basis for figuring out my loops on Wordpress projects, very helpful.

Also your site plays very well on Chrome. I think the transparency works well in both Safari and Chrome.

19Jeff Starr

October 6, 2008 at 8:29 am

@archondigital: I am certainly glad to hear that you find my WordPress articles useful. Also, thanks for the input on Safari and Chrome transparency display. I have found the same to be true on my equipment here in the office. It just seems to be Firefox that chokes a little..

20Louis

October 6, 2008 at 12:17 pm

Aaah, I finally got my internet back! Damn provider took so long to mail me the box. So, here I am, looking at my 1274 unread RSS items, and thinking that I can finally have my regular dose of PP in the week :)

So Jeff, to respond to your response to my response to your design (very short response for today, as I don’t have much time right now).

— transparency: of course you don’t have to remove the transparency just because it’s laggy on some old computers: webdesign suffers from so many constraints already!! I was just pointing the fact so that you can know this sad reality. The great news here is that it’s absolutely fine here on my desktop PC (a Mac Mini).

— JS blocks: I don’t see the problem with a structure like this (please forgive the bad canvas; I don’t have your ASCII art skills ;)

| JavaScript XHTML CSS PHP SQL Apache
| WordPress Tutorials Blogging Series Archive
|
| — item 1
| — item 2
| — item 3
| tag archive for x

— “CSS-delivery goals”: what is your evil plan exactly ? :d

— comments on steroids: I’ve seen something on a blog once, it was exactly what you need! A piece of JS, a quicktag thingy that would allow you to click on an icon next to the comment you wanted to react to. It would take you to the comment textarea, write <a href="#id-of-the-responded-comment" title="See the responded comment">@xxx</a>:. Very clever, I would use that a lot if it was available. I think you would too.

And finally, the footer: I hadn’t even seen that I was in your friends list! That’s very touching. I definitely have to see you in person one day :)

21Stephen Cronin

October 7, 2008 at 5:39 am

Wow Jeff - I dropped by to see what you’re up to and was litterally stunned for a minute. The safe black and white design I was expecting replaced by a wild but intricate psychedelic display! So cool! Makes my own site redesign look boring!

If you can’t tell from all those exclamation marks in my previous paragraph, I’m seriously impressed.

As for suggestions, I agree with Peter about reducing the height of the header to get more content about the fold. Also, at times, I have slight difficulty reading the text because the background is a little strong - I find it easier to read this comment form which has the grey background than it is to read the post body. It might be my laptop display and you wouldn’t want to weaken the background image much because that’s what makes the impact. It’s a tricky thing to balance.

22Jeff Starr

October 12, 2008 at 10:35 am

@Louis: Great to have you back online! Your ideas are slowly — one by one — being implemented here in the new design. Well, most of them, anyway. I really like the idea of beefing up the comment area. Things like the “quick-reply” JavaScript functionality for “@”-replies, comment quicktags, and even gravatars are all excellent ideas. Some of the other central concerns I have addressed on a recent post discussing ideas and improvements for the new design. You know, just between me and you, I am not as happy with this theme as I had thought I would be. Don’t tell anyone, but I am already in the process of another redesign..

23Jeff Starr

October 12, 2008 at 10:44 am

@Stephen: I am slow these days, aren’t I? :P I am stoked that you dropped by to see the new design, and even more so to hear your excellent feedback. Great call on reducing the header height a bit to bring the content up.. I will hopefully be getting to that later this weekend. I will also be working on “toning down” the intensity of the background image, either directly or by increasing the opacity of the various content panels. You are absolutely correct that finding the right balance is tricky — I spent hours trying to fine-tune the display to what it is now.. Hopefully my next stab at it will prove more successful! ;)

24Donace

October 12, 2008 at 10:45 am

another redisgn?! if you have that much spare time come help (read DO) my new theme idea.

Though im intrigued to say the least…if this redesign was this good (baring louis’s critque)…how will the next be?

25Louis

October 12, 2008 at 11:13 am

I am already in the process of another redesign..

I can’t believe you! That’s insane :p

Oh, by the way, I like the new comment form. The big Name, Email and Website headers are great, and the textarea is restful and large enough. Tough, I would put a little JS on the “Read official comment policy” link, so that it slides down the information, instead of making you load another page, and lose what you have already written.

You have an example of what I mean on my archives page. Try clicking on the “Syntaxe autorisée” link. My implementation is obstrusive (because I don’t care :D), but you could add a href attribute to make it point the full page, so that it doesn’t break with JS off, and it’s more semantic.

About Gravatar support, I have to say that I think it’s a bad idea. Gravatar, like ads, is a tiers service. That means that you (a) depends on them to deliver your content (the images here), and (b) add a tremedous delay to your pages loading, because the visitor has to get all the images from Gravatar servers.

What’s the aim of having done such a sexy work on your HTTP request, using images sprites and co, if you destroy the performance of your pages by adding 25 new HTTP requests on another server you don’t control, to show a small image that’s often ugly.

Or you can get them asynchronously with JS, but then, you depend on JS.

(that may be the worst structured comment I’ve ever dared to post here, but I think it contains some reflexion within)

26Donace

October 12, 2008 at 1:25 pm

@ louis..nice and dirty JS indeed, though would a popup be a better option? i mean yes it obtrusive but it enforces th point…the again if they click the link they are not liekly to be here to spam…

Prehaps an alternative is to have a small pop when you click submit comment that says ‘have you followed our posting regualtions?’ and have your dity show hide thing there…

It could be controlled via usernames…ie a new commentor would get it or a commentor who has been marked as spam before gets it and not regualr commentors.

RE gravtars… Yes we ar in reliance with them…I suppose you could use ‘get()’ to grab the most used gravtars and store/cache them locally to combat the lag to a level. Then again JS heavy as this theme is a few extra gravtars if they are pulled via a iframe approach…ie the iframe loads and gravtars within the total loadng time would mirror ala gravtar usage but the ‘readability’ time would not be affected and if the iframe fails (ie gravtar doesnt load etc) it would hang or stall page load times and could be replaced by a default image….somehing lie if page=loaded then display gravtar otherwise default.sprite.ico etc.

Gravtars imo are good for communties and bran recongitions… each to his own

Thanks for all the sugeestion helping me mould ideas for m theme ;)

27Jeff Starr

October 12, 2008 at 1:28 pm

@Donace: You’re planning a new theme too? Do you already have something in mind? I would be interested in hearing about it..

As for my (next) new theme, it is still in the planning phase, and probably won’t see the light of day until early next year.. or maybe sooner, if I can get my hectic schedule cleared up..

28Donace

October 12, 2008 at 1:32 pm

yea i’ve been imagining the perfect theme in my head for a while now!

With your update i’ve actually started wrting up ideas etc and grabbing code scraps, due to my limited psd skills and coding skills it is gonna take a while.

Sure shoot me an email and i’ll mail you my 2 abstracts with checklists :p

29Jeff Starr

October 12, 2008 at 1:37 pm

@Louis:

What’s the aim of having done such a sexy work on your HTTP request, using images sprites and co, if you destroy the performance of your pages by adding 25 new HTTP requests on another server you don’t control

That’s pretty much the reason I decided not to implement them on this design in the first place. I really considered different ways of making them work, but I will probably just wait until the next (re)design. I do enjoy a “well-gravatared” comment area though. I wish more people used them! Btw, Donace certainly offers some good ideas in this department.

Your “Archives” page is slick, although I would expect a cleaner implementation from such a vehement advocate of Web Standards. I could try a similar approach, but would need to chop my verbose Comment Policy down to just the minimum. Overall, I like the idea and will be using it in the next design.

I think “reflexion” would make a good title for a blog ;)

30Jeff Starr

October 12, 2008 at 1:54 pm

@Donace: email sent..

31Louis

October 12, 2008 at 2:42 pm

@Jeff:

Your “Archives” page is slick, although I would expect a cleaner implementation from such a vehement advocate of Web Standards.

I don’t maintain my blog anymore, from a technical point of view. I plan to switch from WordPress to MovableType, or, if I’m patient enough, write my own engine, as I already did1, but in a sexeh OO style.

So you see, though the code on my blog is pretty clean in general, I don’t garanty transcendant code on every page, as I haven’t updated it since a long time. Next version will be either in HTML5 or XHTML2 served as XML. In both case, it won’t be displayed correctly on IE6 I suppose, but did I say I don’t care?

Now, about Gravatar, I’ve thought a little, and I think that if you really like these little pictures, you should implement that feature, but as a bonus.

You would add a layer of JS that would download the pictures post-onload. No loading time added, and you get this little extra. For users without JS, or people without a Gravatar account, it would display the default picture as a CSS background.

On the “comment policy” thing, there are many ways to display an informationnal note. You can use a slider like I do, but you can also use a sexy looking tooltip bubble, or a lightbox-style overlay (shameless promotion :D), etc.

In my opinion, designing a webpage is primarly the reflexon around content organisation/visualisation. What information should I put on this particular page, how should I present it (interface). That’s the real design. The rest is graphic illustration and coding.

I shall backup my idea with a few examples:

what makes Google so great, so well designed ?
Great interface: one field that autofocus at loading, centered, no visual noise, instant loading.
what makes Apple website so cool?
Great content organisation: top menu, you-can-guess-em URLs, lickable huge photos of the products.

So, to come back to what I was saying, you should embrace all the possibilities before making your choice final. On my archive page, I have a potential user interaction on the slided content (he can select some options with radio buttons). In the contrary, the comment policy here is just an informative note, so it may be better to use, let’s say, a tooltip bubble. That’s just an example of course — I don’t like tooltips a lot.

PS: yep, a preview feature would really be nice. I hope that all my HTML will be okay :/

I can grant you access to the labs if you are curious. Mail me in that case :p

32Randy

October 13, 2008 at 11:46 am

“Too girly?” It looks like a great design. Define “too girly!”

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About Perishable Press

Perishable Press is the virtual playground of Jeff Starr — visionary, founder and lead developer of Monzilla Media, a small web and graphic design company in the lush desert oasis of Moses Lake, Washington. Perishable Press features articles and tutorials on many aspects of digital design..

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WordPress Tip for Multiple Themes

Sunday, 4 January 2009, 5:16 pm

If your site makes available multiple themes for users to choose from, remember to include the JavaScript (or any other required code) for any statistical applications that you might be using, such as Mint, Google Analytics, and so forth. I am not sure about the various WordPress statistics plugins, but they may need to be included as well. A good way to check if your stats plugin is tracking data across all themes is to either visit a few pages that you know others aren’t hitting, or else activate each of the alternate themes and check the source code of each one for the required code.

Earlier today, I realized that only several of my most recent themes included the required JavaScript for Mint and Google Analytics. I am now in the process of editing each of the 18 themes available for users at Perishable Press. Haven’t decided on whether or not both statistics apps are needed for all themes, but I will certainly be using at least one of them to keep an eye on everything.

Insane Christmas

Monday, 22 December 2008, 9:47 pm

For as long as I can remember, Christmas has always been a relatively peaceful affair. Sure there’s the usual holiday stress — traffic, shopping, presents, relatives, and all that goes with the preparation of a traditional celebration, but when it’s all said and done, you get to relax and enjoy the peace and harmony of gathering together and basking in the reason for the season: the birth of Christ.

This year, however, the stress factor has been kicked up a few notches, making for a rather insane Christmas if I do say so myself. In addition to the usual holiday chaos, we are currently purchasing a brand new home, and quickly realizing the incredible amount of work involved in the process. If you’ve ever bought a newly built home, you know exactly what I am talking about here.

Plus, as if all the paperwork, inspections, insurance, costs, and anxious anticipation weren’t enough to confound the usual holiday stress, we are also packing up everything, dealing with kids, working full-time jobs, and — beginning on Christmas Eve — moving into our new house.

It certainly is all a great joy and blessing to have such amazing things going on, but combined with the work that I do on the Web — blogging, designing, projects, helping people, and so on — it really becomes all too much rather quickly. We are doing are best to get through everything with our sanity intact, but I have to admit that this is the most insane Christmas I have ever experienced.

New (4G) Blacklist Now in Beta

Monday, 22 December 2008, 9:27 pm

Just a quick note to anyone interested in securing their websites against malicious activity, spam, and other nonsense. Several months after releasing my 3G Blacklist, I have finally begun work on the next incarnation of the blacklist: the 4G Firewall!

The first part of the blacklist is now ready for testing, and I plan on setting it up on Perishable Press within the next few days. While testing on my own site, I thought it would beneficial to also invite a few “beta” testers to run the code on their own site(s) as well.

So, if you have a site that receives its share of malicious attacks, and cracker exploits, drop me a line via the contact form at Perishable Press and I will send you the initial block of HTAccess directives. This version of the Blacklist is looking better than ever, and I look forward to releasing the complete version to the public early in 2009.

Thanks for the Free Traffic and Link Juice

Sunday, 7 December 2008, 1:26 pm

Just wanted to thank the fine folks at fafich.ufmg.br for all the free traffic and link juice. Thanks to their misapplication of my comprehensive canonicalization code, every non-canonical version of their 21,700 indexed pages points directly to my site, Perishable Press. This means that every one of their permalink URLs that is mistyped, lacks the “www” prefix, or contains the superfluous “index.php” file name is directed via permanent redirect directly to the home page of my site.

I have tried contacting the site owner(s) about this situation, but it has been over a week and I have yet to hear anything back. Hopefully, they will take notice soon and correct the issue by properly configuring their htaccess file, but in the meantime, I certainly don’t mind the extra link juice and free traffic! :)

No Plugin Needed for Feed Delay

Monday, 24 November 2008, 10:01 am

I recently saw a WordPress plugin that was designed to delay the publication of your WordPress feed by any specified time interval. While it is a good idea to carefully proofread your content before posting it, a plugin certainly is not required to do so.

As savvy WordPress users already know, WordPress has a built-in post-preview feature that enables authors to view their unpublished content as a published post. This enables authors to do any amount of proofreading and browser checking until they are satisfied with the results.

To do this, simply write your post as usual, and then click on the “Preview this post” button on the right-hand side of the screen. In older versions of WordPress (less than 2.5, I think), you actually need to save (without publishing!) the post first and then re-open it as if to continue editing. You will then see a “Preview »” link sort of hidden (due to poor CSS design) in the upper-right corner near the edit post field. Right-click on that link to open in new tab and you are good to go.

No extra plugin needed! :)

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  • Jeff Starr: Thank you all for the great feedback! I wrote this article as a way to purge some of my thoughts on Twitter, but now see that some of...
  • Jeff Starr: Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback, Adrian. It has been a good year indeed, and I certainly hope that 2009 brings many ble...
  • Jeff Starr: Hi heywho, glad to hear you are doing well! ;) I wish I could join in the festivities.. it has been so long that I almost have forgot...
  • Rob Barrett: Thanks for posting about the Stealth Publish plugin -- just what I needed for my site. Works perfectly!...
  • Jeff Starr: Hi Chiwan, I got your email and have sent some information that may help you with this. Cheers, Jeff...
  • Chiwan: Hi. This is cool. So I can I replace the clock that comes with your Apathy theme with this clock? If that's not possible, how do ...
  • Brass Engraved: Thankyou very much for this, worked like a dream!...

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