BBQ Firewall – Count Blocked Requests

BBQ Firewall is built to be powerful, lightweight, fast and flexible. It’s code base is kept super lean, leaving extra functionality out of core while supporting new features via simple addons. For example, this tutorial shows how to use an addon to display the total number of blocked HTTP requests on the plugin settings page. This can help you get a basic idea of the plugin’s effectiveness. Continue reading »

Enable Contact Form 7 to Work with Disable WP REST API

My free WordPress plugin, Disable WP REST API, disables the REST API for all users who are not logged in to WordPress. So if you’re using a plugin such as Contact Form 7 that requires the REST API, it’s not going to work if Disable WP REST API is active on site. But there is a way to make it work. This quick tutorial explains how to set it up in two steps. Continue reading »

Enable Logging for nG Firewall

This tutorial is for users of my nG Firewall, version 8G or better. It explains how to enable logging for all blocked requests. This is useful for testing, debugging, and keeping an eye on things. Takes only a few minutes to set up, and of course it’s all open source and 100% free for everyone :) Continue reading »

8G Firewall

After more than a year of beta testing, 8G Firewall is ready for use on production sites. So you can benefit from the powerful protection provided by the latest evolution of the nG Firewall (aka nG Blacklist). The 8G Firewall offers lightweight, server-level protection against a wide range of malicious requests, bad bots, automated attacks, spam, and many other types of threats and nonsense. 8G is a lightweight (only 17KB) strong firewall that provides site security and peace of mind. […] Continue reading »

About nG Firewall

The nG Firewall is a carefully crafted set of security rules for Apache and Nginx servers. nG may be applied via your site’s public root .htaccess file, or added via server configuration file. Once added, 8G provides powerful server-level protection against a wide range of malicious requests, bad bots, automated attacks, spam, and many other types of threats and nonsense. It’s a lightweight yet super strong firewall that improves site security and peace of mind. Continue reading »

Apple AirTag Review

Recently learned about Apple AirTag. Which is a small round device that you can put in your bag or whatever to track its location anywhere. Think I need to try one of those cool little gadgets. Here’s my experience in a nutshell.. Continue reading »

Block Random String Comment Spam

Recently WordPress sites have been getting hammered with random-string comment spam. The attackers are clever, using random text strings for every vector except the payload, which usually is the URL used for the comment’s Name link. But for these weird comment spams, the apparent payload is the email address. It’s the only part of the comment that’s not made up of random gibberish. Continue reading »

HTML Abbreviations Cheat Sheet

Here is my custom list of abbreviations for commonly used terms, as written via HTML’s <abbr></abbr> tag. I’m posting this to make it available to anyone who finds it useful. Very handy when writing tutorials related to WordPress, web design and development. A quick copy/paste is much quicker than typing it all out. Without further ado, here is my “cheat sheet” of HTML abbreviations. Continue reading »

All CSS Filter Functions + Quick Copy/Paste Examples

CSS makes it easy to customize image appearance on the fly. So you don’t have to crank open your image editor and do any work there. You can apply many visual effects directly on the image using the CSS filter property. You can change image brightness, contrast, opacity, saturation — even do things like rotate hues, drop shadows, and blur the image. Browser support is solid for all major browsers. Continue reading »

Self-Hosted, Domain-Based Email Addresses FTW

I use domain-based emails for 99% of my email activity. The other 1% is comprised of assorted 3rd-party email services and temporary slash disposable addresses (like for testing purposes and one-off sign-ups, etc.). I can tell you whole-heartedly based on 20+ years working online that self-hosted email is THE WAY to go. Continue reading »

DIY Server Uptime Monitor

There are many free (and commercial) uptime monitoring services that will alert you if your server goes offline. These services are popular because it’s mission critical to know when your sites are down. The sooner you know about it, the sooner you can scramble to get everything back online. I’ve tried other scripts and services but nothing that met my specific needs: simple, secure, lightweight and blazing fast. So decided roll my own DIY server status monitor and share it […] Continue reading »

Margin Offset for Anchor Targets with CSS or JavaScript

For sites using a fixed-position “sticky” header or similar, it’s necessary to add an offset margin to any on-page anchor targets. For example this recent article provides a Table of Contents menu with links to each section on the page. Click a link and the page scrolls down to the target element, which is an <h2></h2> heading tag. Thanks to one of the CSS solutions provided in this tutorial, the scrolling takes into account the page’s 50-pixel sticky header, so […] Continue reading »

All the Hyphens & Dashes

Typography is inspiring :) I recently posted about all the different HTML “X” characters. Then a tweet from Helge Klein inspired me to write a follow-up post showing all the different ways to write a dash or hyphen – character in HTML. Like most online content creators, I knew about – and —. But I didn’t realize there were so many other hyphen and dash characters. Continue reading »

WordPress get_comments_number() Not Working Correctly?

It seems that the WordPress function, get_comments_number(), is not working correctly. It is returning inconsistent results for posts with zero comments, pingbacks, or trackbacks. Sometimes the function returns true, other times false. It’s just random, from what I’ve been able to tell. So maybe a bug, or maybe something I am missing. Not a big deal, just looking for clues.. Continue reading »

WordPress: Display Posts on a Page with Paging and Navigation

In WordPress themes and plugins, the Loop is used to display posts on the front end. Typically the Loop displays either a single post (like when you’re viewing a blog post), or multiple posts (like when you’re viewing a category archive). Things get more tricky however, when you want to display posts on a page. Continue reading »

Breaking Away from Big Social Media

It feels SO GOOD to move away from big social media sites. You know the ones. During the first few years when Facebook and Twitter were first getting started (like back around 2007 ish), I followed the herd and jumped on board. Started posting stuff. Added the little social buttons on all of my websites. Even wrote some tutorials about Twitter and other social media. I was into it. Big time. These days though, not so much. More and more, […] Continue reading »

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