Lessons Learned after 5 Years of Blogging
This Fall, I celebrate five years of blogging. I have written tons of web development stuff at Perishable Press, lots of helpful WordPress stuff at Digging into WordPress, some creative/artistic stuff at Dead Letter Art, jQuery stuff at jQuery Mix, and some business-related web-design stuff at Monzilla Media. Plus a bunch of interviews, guest posts, and other blogging projects. So yeah, lots of blogging and writing during the past five years. And they just flew by. Despite what the haters […] Continue reading »
A Few Steps Back
I have been doing some non-design-related work recently and have not been saturated with anything even computer-related for the past several weeks. Mostly I have been just enjoying life, but also drawing quite a bit and going around taking photos of old, decrepit homesteads and factories. Needless to say, it’s been a much-needed respite from the usual crunch and grind. Taking a few steps back like this from the Web — even for such a short period of time — […] Continue reading »
New Year Reminder
Just a reminder to stay focused on what you are doing as the New Year unfolds. The world has been overflowing with opportunity and creativity like never before. But most of it is profit-driven regurgitation and mass-marketing of empty hype and latest trends. Stay away from the garbage and keep your mind focused on your goals. Distractions may snag your attention for a moment, but you’ve got to catch yourself as soon as possible and realize that you’re wasting valuable […] Continue reading »
Stupid Twitter Tricks
Might as well face it, Twitter is here to stay. Not that it’s all that bad, just used to be a lot more laid-back and enjoyable. These days it seems to have been taken over by the lowest common-denominator, mostly high-school twits or useless commercial propaganda. Even so, I still enjoy tweeting the occasional profound thought once in awhile, and even like to play around with various types of “advanced” Twitter functionality. You know, cool stuff like including “Tweet This!” links […] Continue reading »
How to Protect Your Site Against Content Thieves (and Other Scumbags)
Stolen content is the bane of every blogger who provides a publicly available RSS feed. By delivering your content via feed, you make it easy for scrapers to assimilate and re-purpose your material on their crap Adsense sites. It’s bad enough that someone would re-post your entire feed without credit, but to use it for cheap money-making schemes is about as pathetic as it gets. If you’re lucky, the bastards may leave all the links intact, so at least you […] Continue reading »
Find a Diamond in the Rough
Getting the best possible web hosting is for obvious reasons something that all website owners aim to do. However, you might know what type of web hosting you are looking to get but still do not know what provider to partner up with. Many of the web hosting top lists you find on the web today look the same as they all take the same things into account. These guides usually take into account similar factors and cost usually is […] Continue reading »
Associate Any File with Windows Notepad in Five Seconds
In my article, Associate Extensionless Files with Notepad, I explain how to navigate the labyrinthine maze of Windows dialogue menus to assign Microsoft’s Notepad text editor as the opening application for files without extensions. In this post, I’ll show you how to associate any file type with any program (including Notepad) in less than five seconds. Ready? Don’t blink, you’ll miss it.. ;) Continue reading »
Just Nod if You Can Hear Me
I have always heard it said that it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. When the grocery clerk sarcastically tells you to “have a nice day,” you probably understand it to mean just the opposite, and that the person couldn’t care less about you or your day. Conversely, when your fellow employee jokingly tells you to “go to hell,” you probably take the comment in stride and assume that it was intended to be a friendly and […] Continue reading »
How to Take DVD/Video Screenshots on Windows
Taking screenshots of DVD, MPEG, AVI, and other video on Windows machines requires a couple of extra steps. A normal screenshot is easy enough to capture by pressing the “Print Screen” button on your keyboard. To capture a screenshot of video display, however, you need to disable hardware acceleration to make it work. To do this on Windows machines, go to your Desktop properties and click on the Settings tab. Click on the Advanced button and then on the Troubleshooting […] Continue reading »
5-Minute PNG Image Optimization
A great way to improve the performance of your site is to optimize the size of your images. Smaller image sizes require less bandwidth, disk space and load time, and ultimately improve visitor experience. In this article, I share my effective 5-minute technique for optimizing PNG images. This is a two-step, lossless optimization process that removes as much extraneous data as possible without sacrificing any image quality whatsoever. It’s fast, free, and highly effective. Continue reading »
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience.
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