Building the 5G Blacklist
Protecting your website is more important than ever. There are a million ways to do it, and this is one of them. In fact, it’s what I use to protect Perishable Press and other key sites. It’s called the 5G Blacklist, and it’s something I’ve been working on for a long time. The idea is simple enough: analyze bad requests and block them using a firewall/blacklist via .htaccess. Now in its 5th generation, the 5G Blacklist has evolved into a […] Continue reading »
Optimizing WordPress Permalinks with htaccess
Okay, so Summer’s over, kids are back in school, and I’m finding all sorts of free time to continue writing and posting. One of my Summer projects involved updating & optimizing one of my old project sites, DeadLetterArt.com. It was basically a huge clean-up session that included lots of content consolidation and permalink restructuring. So that’s the topic of this post, how to use htaccess to optimize WordPress permalinks. I’ll go through some htaccess techniques and explain how they can […] Continue reading »
Huge Collection of Code Snippets: HTAccess, PHP, WordPress, jQuery, HTML, CSS
Please excuse this self-serving, miscellaneous post, but I’ve just got to purge all of these code snippets and scraps collected over the years. Whenever I update this site, I place any removed/unused code snippets into a giant note file for future reference, just in case. There’s all sorts of different types of code and snippets that just keep growing and growing and.. and finally it gets to a point where I just need to dump everything and start fresh. Welcome […] Continue reading »
The Art & Science of Folding CSS Code
One of the joys of working with CSS is that you can basically write the code any way you want. Sure there are some basic rules you have to follow (like using brackets), but for the most part you can format your CSS code as elaborately or as plainly as you see fit. You can use this vast flexibility to improve the organization and usability of your working stylehseets before compressing them for production use. Continue reading »
Block Tough Proxies
If you want to block tough proxies like hidemyass.com, my previously posted .htaccess methods won’t work. Those methods will block quite a bit of proxy visits to your site, but won’t work on the stealthier proxies. Fortunately, we can use a bit of PHP to keep them out. Continue reading »
Ajax-Powered Error Logs
As an obsessive website administrator, I like to keep a keen eye on my error logs. Once a week, I download my PHP, 404, and other error logs, and analyze them as closely as time allows. Monitoring site errors and other traffic patterns leads to many of the security-related articles I post here at Perishable Press, including resources such as the 5G Blacklist, Ultimate HTAccess Blacklist, and the Blacklist Candidate Series. Easily, one of the best ways to protect your […] Continue reading »
Upload Large Files or Die Trying
I recently spent some time wrestling with various e-commerce/shopping-cart/membership plugins. One of them was of course the popular WP e-Commerce plugin, which uses a directory named “downloadables” to store your precious goods. I had some large files that needed to go into this folder, but the server’s upload limit stopped me from using the plugin’s built-in file uploader to do so. Continue reading »
Humans.txt
One thing I love about Twitter is the instant feedback. For the past few weeks I’ve been seeing lots of 404 requests like this: https://perishablepress.com/humans.txt https://perishablepress.com/humans.txt https://perishablepress.com/humans.txt At first I thought it was some skript kiddie getting creative, you know as a play on the robots.txt file, which is also located in the root of many websites. So it seemed interesting enough to tweet about: Continue reading »
Multiple Sitemaps
Yes you can have multiple sitemaps for your site. Create the sitemaps you need, and then specify them in your robots.txt file. For example, here are the robots.txt directives for the two sitemaps used here at Perishable Press: Continue reading »
10 Characters for Your WordPress Blacklist
Quick WordPress tip for easily and quietly blocking a ton of comment spam. Akismet and other programs are good at catching most spam, but every now and then a bunch of weird, foreign-language spam will sneak past the filters and post live to your site. Here’s a good example of the kind of stuff that’s easy to block: Continue reading »
Awesome New CSS3 Selectors
The W3C CSS Working Group introduced some powerful new CSS3 selectors to the working CSS3 specification. These new selectors aren’t yet supported by all browsers (currently only Webkit and IE), but designers can start using all the goodness a la progressive enhancement. Let’s check out these awesome new CSS3 selectors and see some real-world examples that are simply too good to be true. Continue reading »
Ajax RSS Feeds with More Sidebar
After implementing Chris Coyier’s More Sidebar technique here at Perishable Press, I needed a good source of “filler” content for the “more” blocks. After experimenting with multiple loops and template tags, the idea of sliding in RSS feeds seemed like a better solution. Replacing some empty space with great content is a win-win for everyone. For example, I display a few of my recent tweets in the sidebar to help fill a lil’ space. It’s a great way to share […] Continue reading »
PHP Tip: Encode & Decode Data URLs
Converting small images to data-URLs is a great way to eliminate HTTP requests and decrease loading time for your pages. Using PHP‘s base64_encode() and base64_decode() functions, we have the power to convert images to data-URLs and vice-versa. This article explains how it all works, and shows some different ways of converting back and forth between original and encoded images. Continue reading »
Ajax Slide & Fade Content with jQuery
I recently redesigned my business site, Monzilla Media. The new design features a clean and simple single-page, fixed-sidebar layout. Visitors use the various links in the fixed sidebar to quickly and automatically scroll through to any section. In the Portfolio section, each item contains a “Details” link that loads more content into the fixed sidebar. As the site is mostly static, I wanted this bit of functionality to really shine, and after much testing and tweaking, ended up with a […] Continue reading »
CSS3 Tip: Removing Box Shadows
Adding box shadows is a great way to bring depth and focus to your design. You have probably seen this trick before: .selector { -webkit-box-shadow: 0 3px 5px #333; -moz-box-shadow: 0 3px 5px #333; box-shadow: 0 3px 5px #333; } Continue reading »
Hacked by Google?
The setup: I recently launched a new plugin that included a Demo page. To keep things flexible, I set up the Demo as a page on my experimental “Labs” WordPress installation, which is entirely nofollow, noindex and noarchive, meaning that Google can’t legitimately see what’s there. Continue reading »
