One of the year-end maintenance rituals that I have decided to adopt involves sharing a few annual site statistics for Perishable Press. Over the course of the previous year, Perishable Press has gone through many changes, including switching servers multiple times, eliminating nofollow attributes from comments, and even a complete site overhaul and restructuring. Despite the chaos surrounding such events, traffic levels have continued to increase, bounce rates have steadily decreased, and the number of feed subscribers continues to grow. Overall, I extremely pleased with how the site is doing, especially considering my disdain for formal advertising and social marketing nonsense. Fortunately, with virtually zero promotional effort, Perishable Press has grown from a simple hobby site into an actual destination for web design and development information. Sure, in the endless ocean of the Internet, I am but a blip on the screen, however, looking at the statistics for 2007, I am optimistic and even excited about what the future may hold for this site.

2007 Stats

In order to save everyone time, I present the following statistics with minimal commentary. As my readers are well aware, I could spend hours and hours discussing every bleepin’ detail of every bleepin’ aspect of every bleepin’ statistic. See, you know what I’m sayin’. Instead, I will let the stats speak for themselves and then, if necessary, field any questions or concerns that you may have. Alright, enough bull droppinz — let’s get on with it..

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When I first began Perishable Press, I intended the site to focus primarily on the creative side of web and graphic design. However, I also wanted to share equally my ideas and experiences involving music, video, and other multimedia avenues of creative expression. Further, because I enjoy writing, and find myself frequently focusing on art, inspiration, and artistic expression, the initial plan encompassed a perpetual exploration and presentation of these topics here at Perishable Press.

Two years later, the original vision continues to change. Perishable Press has evolved into a site that focuses almost exclusively on technical aspects of web design. Although readers may occasionally experience a few digressions into graphic design, photography, and creative expression, these topics no longer represent the primary purpose of the site. Currently, visitors to the site will notice a plethora of content aimed at helping designers, developers, and bloggers excel on the Internet. Over the course of fifteen redesigns, the look and feel of Perishable Press has managed almost completely to evolve synchronously with the content. Almost..

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This post is hereby dedicated to the official logging of all unresolved and/or unexplained errors encountered during development or implementation of various plugins, extensions, themes, scripts, and/or anything else that results in bizarre and mysterious errors, bugs, or other anomalies. Further, we will also post any potential solutions, fixes, workarounds, or explanations for any errors logged in this post. This information is provided for reference purposes only — please share any related information you may have concerning any of the errors described in this error log. Please use the comment form below or simply contact us directly. Thanks.

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Perishable Press is now running WordPress 2.0.5. Everything went very well as we upgraded directly from version 2.0.2. Please report any errors or unusual/unexpected behavior (concerning this site). Your help is much appreciated.

Perishable Press recently celebrated its one-year anniversary! Well, okay, so nobody really celebrated anything, but we did take note as our first anniversary both came and went. Yeah, …uh, actually, no one is even quite sure of the actual anniversary date. But we do know it has been a little over one year since we began all of this time-consuming nonsense.. –Whatever!!

Perishable Press went online sometime during September of 2005. The first dozen or so posts were strictly for blog development purposes, and much development has continued since that time. Everything from upgrading WordPress (we started with 1.5), designing themes (thirteen to date), and coding plugins (four to date) has kept us very busy over the course of the past year.

We have spent more time on this website than on any other online project — ever! Granted, most of the work that went into establishing perishablepress.com as an online resource for digital design went into exploring the many different aspects of web design: PHP, SQL, JavaScript, CSS, (X)HTML, htaccess, writing, graphics, servers, browsers, usability, optimization, validation, standardization, protection, archiving, debugging, designing, tweaking, linking, posting, learning, typing, and everything else involved with a thoroughly executed and well-maintained online reference. And now, one year later, we finally have obtained a sense of completion, of accomplishment, in building something useful that will endure for at least a few years to come..

So then we shall choose this day, November 8th, as the official anniversary date for perishablepress.com. The first year has been all about opening the doors of the World Wide Web and diving into the exciting world of online virtual existence — installing and tweaking and designing and building and writing and and and! Thus, now that we are well-equipped and fully functional, perhaps the coming year will see a greater focus on improving and enhancing content, spooning inspiring news, and writing informative, useful articles. So, until this time next year..

– Here’s to the future!

If you have question, comment, or concern, and prefer to leave a comment rather than send an email, please drop a comment via the form below. I keep a close eye on all comments left on this post, and will do my best to respond in as soon as possible. Please note that all comments left at this post are open to the public and available for anyone to see. That said, have at it!

What is Perishable Press?

Perishable Press began as a virtual journey into the digital chaos of the blogosphere. While initially designing the site, we began posting a variety of content, primarily information related to the project itself. During the development process, as the site exploded into a frenzy of ideas, possibilities, and experimentation, we continued to post code examples, useful links, and tons of reference material. Slowly, as the site began to attract visitors, we began to clarify our scope, define our niche, and produce content accordingly. Currently, the site enjoys a steady flow of visitors, a growing number of subscribers, and a great group of contributors.

In its present capacity, Perishable Press serves as an online resource through which diverse multimedia projects, interests, and ideas come together as an integrated expression of creativity. Perishable projects include writing, drawing, painting, digital graphics, desktop publishing, website design, audio mixing, video editing, and digital photography. Perishable Press also features ideas and philosophy concerning the process of cultivating creative enlightenment, integrating creative endeavors, and maximizing creative lifestyles. Other topics involve subjective relativism, critical analyses, and, of course, biblical principles.

The general purpose of Perishable Press is to provide an open forum through which information is collected, organized, and shared. The information covered and presented via this website focuses on topics from several different perspectives, including creativity, artistic expression, inspiration, and criticism. From these perspectives writers explore the intellectual understanding of their particular creative endeavors, which generally involve art, music, video, graphics, websites, technology, and lots of philosophical contemplation and debate.

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For many months, visitors to Perishable Press encountered the highly customized Jupiter! theme. Utilizing sIFR, Prototype, Lightbox, and several other bandwidth-heavy scripts, the Jupiter! theme weighs in at well over 400KB/page when saved as an offline copy. The Jupiter! theme also employs every plugin used here at Perishable Press, resulting in even slower performance for broadband users, and utterly painful experiences for those on modem/dial-up.

Recently, we decided to give Jupiter! a facelift and dump the heavy baggage. The idea was to create a theme aesthetically similar to Jupiter!, focusing on speed and usability without sacrificing essential functionality. The result is Lithium, the eleventh WordPress theme from Perishable Press & Monzilla Media. Lithium is lightweight, accessible, user-friendly, XHTML-strict, and provides helpful features such as tags, keywords, gravatars, as well as comment enhancements and autodiscovery feeds. Best of all, Lithium provides the same overall "look and feel" as Jupiter!, but with better, brighter colors and sharper, sexier details.

Nonetheless, there are yet simpler, more refined themes in the works for Perishable Press. By the time you read this, in fact, the Lithium theme may no longer appear as the site's "default" theme. So, for the record, here are links to Jupiter!, Lithium, and a selection of all Press themes.

After a few weeks of utter silence here at Perishable Press, it is time to post some fresh material. We have a few interesting — perhaps useful — articles coming up, including Website Attack Recovery, Lightbox/Tooltips Bug Fix, Even More Server Drama, and even a few posts covering recent events, tips, and other general nonsense. Things quiet down around here while we are working on new websites, but new content is always anticipated in between projects. We enjoy sharing insights and other news with readers whenever possible, and always enjoy hearing from visitors and guests. So, as the intense summer heat slowly boils us alive here in the Desert Oasis, we look forward to the imminent arrival of Fall, and all that that implies..

Welcome to WordPress Plugin Central! Here we will organize, review, and log any changes made to the plugins used here at Perishable Press. Our first task involves listing all of the plugins used as of May 29, 2006 (Note: This list is updated with every plugin modification and is current as of the “Edited on” date in the “Post Metadata” section to the left of this post):

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Ever imagine your website represented as a cluster graph? Well prepare your DOM and check out Sala’s Websites as Graphs project. Each map represents a single website page, each dot represents a different tag, and each color represents a different set of tags. Here is the graphical representation for Perishable Press:

Perishable Press DOM Graph

Editor’s Note: This article applies exclusively to our Lithium theme, which is no longer the default site theme. Different themes may or may not include print style sheets of their own. Click here to check out the Lithium theme, to which this article applies. Click here to see a list of all available themes.

Perishable Press now with fully printable articles! Check out the new print CSS stylesheet by checking out an article’s “Print Preview” from the browser’s “File” menu. Before the addition of special CSS styles for print versions, Press articles printed non-sequentially and included everything — buttons, banners, text fields, icons, and every odd list, break, and scrollbar — and looked utterly disastrous. Well thank heavens the nightmare is over. Articles now print like articles and pages now print like pages. Here are some articles that include some common post elements — text, code, lists, images, etc. — as demonstration ¹ of our fresh new CSS print styles.

• Example 1 [ code example ]
• Example 2 [ image example ]
• Example 3 [ blockquote example ]
• Example 4 [ page view example ]
• Example 5 [ lists, code, text ]

¹ Note: Tested with Firefox 1.5.0.3, Internet Explorer 6.0.2900, and Netscape Navigator 8.0.1. For some mysterious reason yet to be determined, Opera 8.54 refused to cooperate, and thus may not prove worthwhile for printing Perishable Press articles. Don’t cry too much. Also, it should be noted that, for browsers other than Opera, regardless of how jumbled the links or other text may appear in Print Preview mode, the articles will indeed print according to CSS. This is due to CSS2 rules that append and print the full URL after each link.

Earlier this year, we decided to implement the much-hyped Google Analytics visitor-tracking and optimization tool. The free service offers enterprise-level statistics capabilities and provides “high-end web analytics” and works with or without Google AdWords. Sounds great, however the service is available through invitation only. Skeptical that we would ever hear anything, we decided to submit a request anyway.

Several months later, after having completely forgotten about signing up for GA (Google Analytics), we received our official GA invitation and immediately began the registration process. The invitation included a “secret code” and required us to create a free Google account, which enables access to a variety of Google services, such as “Analytics, AdWords, Google Groups and [a] personalized Google home page.” After verification of the account email, we were ready to register for GA.

GA registration involves entering your secret password some personal information. I hope they were not looking for any authentic personal data. After floating the password, you’re in the business. The final steps include dropping the following lines of JavaScript into any pages that need analyzing:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
   _uacct = "UA-xxx777-1";
   urchinTracker();
</script>

The JavaScript code should be placed near the end of the document source code, preferably just before the <body> tag. Once the script is in place and online, login to your GA account and activate the target page(s) via the “validate tracking” tool. Once this happens, Google Analytics begins tracking, analyzing, and reporting visitor activity at your website. Nice. There are now a plethora of high-end statistics tools and resources at your command.

After successfully setting up GA for Perishable Press, we immediately requested an invite for Monzilla Media. Apparently, it is only a matter of time.

Step right up and leave a comment! Complete Gravatar functionality in full effect. Leave a comment to sport your gravatar. Of course, you must have a gravatar to use this feature. Check out this post to see some tuf gravatar action in effect.

Hint: gravatars are the small images that appear next to post comments. They are meant to represent the person leaving the comment.

Praise the Lord! Perishable Press now humbly resides on a new server. Time for a little break..

Website makeover in progress (again). Actually, this website will probably exist in a perpetually evolving state until the end of time. It is simply too much fun to tweak, build, and learn. I now consider this website a project devoted to writing articles and practicing WordPress, web design, scripting, accessibility, and SEO. So feel free to look around, read some Nonsense, and get into some Business, but don’t be surprised if the universe folds or the sky turns red during your visit…

This website is the product of over three months of code, design, redesign, and eyedrops. It takes advantage of WordPress 2.0, which has been functioning flawlessly. The Monzilla website (and all subsequent sites) will also employ WP 2.0, or whichever version is the most current at the time of design.

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At last we are witnessing the completion of a WordPress theme that should endure at least the next year. If I find myself redesigning the Perishable Press website yet again sometime during 2006, then I should just walk away from it all. The Information skin has plenty of features to keep me busy and lots of nooks and crannies for some serious chillz.

Update (02/07/06): Okay, so maybe I should just walk away from all of this WP business. Here it is, 2006, and I am once again redesigning the Perishable Press website. The last redesign (i.e., the Information theme) employed JavaScript, style-switchers, many plugins, and a heavily hacked WP 1.5 engine. Needless to say, although the Information theme was indeed XHTML-strict and theoretically universal, IE6 choked on it, dial-up modems choked on it, and it would have eventually collapsed upon itself due to its immense, convoluted structure. As much as I loved its look and feel, I had to junk it in order to simplify, streamline, and get serious about future developments. So, I completely erased the old site and replaced it with this fresh, new version, which runs on WP 2.0, doesn’t require JavaScript, and is extremely universal and bandwidth friendly. Plus it validates on all fronts and boasts simplicity and elegance over tricks and gimmicks. How long before the next redesign? God only knows.

Several months since it began, the Perishable Press is finally being fleshed out with posts, feeds, and images. Now that the site is (95%) built, we are experiencing the joys of blogging, tweaking, and fine-tuning details. So if the site looks good but seems a little short on content, just give us time — there is much planned for the future. I am grateful for this website, and look forward to using it to its fullest potential.

Editor’s Note: This post contains the contents of the first version of the “About Perishable Press” page, which was online since the site’s launch in August 2005 until updated in June 2007. The content is posted with an historical archival date to avoid disruption of regularly scheduled programming.

Contents

1. Overview »
2. Purpose »
3. Philosophy »
4. Technical »
5. Authors »

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