WordPress Error Fix: “Call to undefined function get_header()”

I’m seeing a big increase in bot attacks targeting theme files directly. First they get the URL to your theme directory. There are numerous ways for a bot to get this information. For example most themes include assets like CSS and JavaScript files, and the link includes the full URL. So then once they have the theme URL, bad bots will make direct requests for well-known theme template files, like index.php and header.php. Requesting template files directly may reveal possible […] Continue reading »

Ultimate Comment Blacklist for WordPress: How to Stop Spam Without Plugins

How do YOU stop comment spam? If you’re like a lot of WordPress users, you just grab another plugin or two and call it good. I mean after all, plugins like Akismet work great at stopping spam. The only downside is that, well, you’re relying on another plugin. And that’s fine for folks who just wanna “get ’er done”, although each active plugin requires additional maintenance and server resources. Continue reading »

The Plan for 2019

The “Plan” for 2019: keep working hard and doing your best. Everything else will happen on its own. Less worry, less stress, less time in front of a screen. Work smarter, enjoy life more. You know, the usual inspiring things that people say as a new year unfolds. In short, go with the flow and stay focused. Continue reading »

Cleaning Up Google Search Results

This post is about how I cleaned up an incorrect URL in the Google search results. My business site is basically a one-page portfolio site, located at the URL https://monzillamedia.com/. But in the Google search results, the URL was showing as https://monzilla.biz/, which did not exist. So all potential customers were getting an error page. Fortunately I was able to re-acquire the monzilla.biz domain and redirect all traffic to monzillamedia.com. Continue reading »

Avoid Blasty for DMCA Takedowns

Blasty is a paid online service that sends DMCA takedown notices to infringing websites on your behalf. As the author of several books, I paid for one year of the service in March of 2018 to help combat rampant piracy. And for several months the service worked great. I enjoyed receiving the periodic email reports letting me know of successful takedowns. And I could log into my account and check out specific takedowns, view reports, and find all sorts of […] Continue reading »

How to Download Entire Websites on Mac

Concept One These days in this crazy world it makes sense to archive locally any critical online data. That way when the Internet is not working (for whatever reason), you still have access to your important infos and data. For those who are listening and interested in being prepared, here is the quickest, easiest way that I have been able to find to archive complete offline copies of websites to your Mac (or iOS). It makes use of a free […] Continue reading »

Automatic IP Blacklist

Recently a reader going by the name of Rock Star sent me a cool little PHP script that automatically updates your site’s .htaccess with a current list of bad IP addresses. This is useful because it gives you better “real time” protection against attacks and malicious requests. This tutorial shares the code and explains how to implement in two easy steps. Continue reading »

Facebook Not Letting Users Delete Their Own Comments

Here is video proof that Facebook is not letting people delete their own comments. The video shows me trying to delete two different comments, using three different browsers: Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Watch the video and see for yourself. It’s been like this for at least several days now (not sure when it started). Very frustrating! Continue reading »

Enable PHP fsockopen with CSF

Recently started some sites with Liquid Web hosting, everything going extremely well all around. There was one hiccup (at least for me) where PHP’s fsockopen was not working. At the time, I was trying to figure out why the Whois Lookup feature used by Blackhole Bad Bots was not working. Initial investigation revealed that fsockopen() external HTTP requests were getting blocked somewhere. Everything else worked, including making the requests via cURL. Continue reading »

Difference between mod_alias and mod_rewrite

Most of the redirect techniques provided in my stupid .htaccess tricks article all use Apache’s alias module, mod_alias. You can also use mod_rewrite to redirect URLs. The main difference is that, with mod_alias, the server is responding to the client request with a redirect, so the client immediately is sent to the new location. Conversely, with mod_rewrite, the server simply returns the new content, so the client is not actually redirected anywhere. This makes mod_rewrite more advantageous because it happens […] Continue reading »

CLI Forward-Reverse Lookup

In previous posts, I’ve explained how to verify identity of search engines and other bots, by looking up the host name and then doing a reverse lookup to cross-check the IP address. This is often referred to as a forward-reverse lookup, or something to that effect. The point is, there are plenty of free online tools available for performing forward-reverse IP/host lookups. And online tools are great, but it’s also possible to do forward/reverse lookups directly via the command line, […] Continue reading »

Activate WordPress Plugins via the Database

Recently a reader named Chris asked, “how can we turn ON a plugin from the database?” He mentioned reading my previous article, Quickly Disable or Enable All WordPress Plugins via the Database, but for circumstantial slash technical reasons needed to do the opposite and enable a plugin directly via the WordPress database. I thought it was an interesting question that might actually be useful to discuss here at Perishable Press. Continue reading »

Twitter Login Verification Bug

A few days ago, I was unable to log in to my Perishable Twitter account. My login credentials simply did not work. I’ve been successfully logging into Twitter since 2007 with no problems. So it was surprising at first, and then I figured it was some sort of weird Twitter bug. So I began investigating and recording the events/details in this post.. Continue reading »

X Theme Leftover Code Snippets

While working on the site’s 24th redesign, I ended up with about 10 code snippets that were awesome but ultimately not needed. So rather than just delete these tasty functions, I am posting them here for future reference. Who knows, during the next site update I may decide to implement or repurpose some of these techniques. And of course sharing is caring, so feel free to use any of these code snippets in your own projects. Check out the Table […] Continue reading »

404 Fix: Block Nuisance Requests for Non-Existent Files

As I’ve written before, blocking nuisance requests can help save you money by cutting down on wasted server resources, memory, and so forth. It also saves you time, as your server access and error logs won’t be full of nuisance request spam. So you will have more resources and time for things that matter, like running your business, helping customers, improving code, etc. So to continue the proud tradition of blocking malicious traffic, this post builds upon previous blocking techniques […] Continue reading »

1password vs. Dashlane

I was a 1password user for years. Thought it was great, everything I needed without not too much bloat, ads, etc. Then one day 1password locked everyone out. As in can’t log in with the master password. So no access to any passwords, notes or anything. Business shut down. Thought I was hacked. Not a good feeling. Immediately after shooting an emergency email to 1password support, I began looking for a good replacement for 1password. Not even gonna wait 10 […] Continue reading »

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