Back up that Database with phpMyAdmin
Backing up your database as often as possible is essential. For WordPress, as well as for other applications, plugins and other scripts that help automate the task are easily obtainable. However, for several reasons, it is a good idea to understand the process of manually creating a backup copy of your database. This quick tutorial should help cement the process into a solid reference. We are assuming that you have an SQL database and have access via phpMyAdmin. Continue reading »
Lightbox + FancyTooltips Bug Fix
For those of us enjoying the stylish functionality of Lightbox or any of its many incarnations, images “magically” overlay the window and unfold, revealing navigational buttons, image count, and of course the image titles. Likewise, for those of us enjoying the stylish functionality of FancyTooltips or any of its many incarnations, title and alt attributes manifest as stylish displays of CSS brilliance that your visitors will love. Continue reading »
Website Attack Recovery
Recently, every website on our primary server was simultaneously attacked. The offending party indiscriminately replaced the contents of every index file, regardless of its extension or location, with a few vulgar lines of code, which indicated intention, identity, and influence. Apparently, the attack occurred via Germany, through a server at the University of Hamburg (uni-hamburg.de). This relatively minor attack resulted in several hours of valuable online education. In this article, it is our intention to share experience with website attack […] Continue reading »
The .htaccess Rules for all WordPress Permalinks
Updated January 15th 2025: All code in this article is current with WordPress 6.7 and better. The permalink rules presented below should work with all versions of WordPress. That is, the current rules are backward compatible. Jump to the Permalink Rules » I recently performed a series of tests on a fresh installation of WordPress to determine the exact .htaccess rewrite rules that WordPress writes to its .htaccess file for various permalink configurations. In the WordPress General > Permalinks settings, WordPress […] Continue reading »
Passing Quotation Marks via wp_link_pages
According to the WordPress Codex1, it is possible to pass quotation marks via the parameters of the function, wp_link_pages(). This would enable users to assign a particular css class or id to the function output, thereby providing greater design and behavioral control over that particular object. But alas, as reported several times in the WordPress Codex2, wp_link_pages() is unable to pass quotes without causing errors. Continue reading »
Reversing WordPress Page Navigation Order
This article explains how to reverse the order of WordPress archive navigation links. For more information about WP’s navigation tags, check out this post. Continue reading »
Website Cluster Graphs
Ever imagine your website represented as a cluster graph? Well prepare your DOM and check out Sala’s Websites as Graphs project. Just visit the free online tool and enter the URL of any web page. After a few moments, the site will generate a colorful graph such as the one displayed on the left of this post. Each generated map represents a single website page, where each dot represents a different tag, and each color represents a different type of […] Continue reading »
Perishable Press Print CSS
Editor’s Note: This article applies exclusively to my 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. Continue reading »
Stylish Deleted Text
Fashion stylish deleted text in XHTML via the über obscure del tag. Code example: <del datetime="1999-Dec-31T23:59:59+00:00" title="Text deleted: 31-Dec-1999 @ 23:59"> Terminate me. </del> Live example: Terminate me. Continue reading »
Permalink Enlightenment
I recently enabled the permalinks feature for a fresh WordPress 2.0.2 upgrade. The process required several hours of research and approximately 90 minutes to fully implement. This brief article summarizes the process and applies to the following setup: Continue reading »
Obscure XHTML Tags
Well, maybe not that obscure.. <pre> — Preformatted character data <em> — Renders as emphasized text <strong> — Renders as strong emphasized text <tt> — Renders font as teletype or monospace <dfn> — Defines a definition term <code> — Defines computer code text <samp> — Defines sample computer code <kbd> — Defines keyboard text <var> — Defines a variable <cite> — Defines a citation <strike> — XHTML Transitional only <del> — Indicates deleted text <ins> — Indicates inserted text <dl> […] Continue reading »
About the Robots.txt File
About the Robots Exclusion Standard: The robots exclusion standard or robots.txt protocol is a convention to prevent cooperating web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website. The information specifying the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called robots.txt in the top-level directory of the website. Notes on the robots.txt Rules: Rules of specificity apply, not inheritance. Always include a blank line between rules. Note also that not all robots […] Continue reading »
HTTP Error Codes
A list of HTTP Error codes and corresponding definitions: Informational Codes 100 — Continue 101 — Switching Protocols Successful Client Requests 200 — OK 201 — Created 202 — Accepted 203 — Non-Authoritative Information 204 — No Content 205 — Reset Content 206 — Partial Content Client Request Redirected 300 — Multiple Choices 301 — Moved Permanently 302 — Moved Temporarily 303 — See Other 304 — Not Modified 305 — Use Proxy 307 — Temporary Redirect Client Request Errors […] Continue reading »
Lightbox Notes
To add Lightbox functionality to any single image: Add rel="lightbox" to the anchor tag. Add a title="" attribute to the anchor tag. Add an alt="" attribute to the image tag. To add Lightbox functionality to any series of images: Add rel="lightbox[value]" to the anchor tag of each image. Add a title="" attribute to the anchor tag of each image. Add an alt="" attribute to the image tag of each image. Any set of pictures with the same rel="lightbox[value]" will display […] Continue reading »
JavaScript Notes Plus
Welcome to Perishable Press! This article covers a plethora of useful JavaScript tips and tricks. For more excellent JavaScript information, check out the JavaScript tag archive. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to Perishable Press for a periodic dose of online enlightenment ;) Nifty JavaScript Design Tricks Clickable divs Standard design practice dictates that the site logo or banner located at the top of the page links to the home page of the site. There are […] Continue reading »
WordPress RDF Source Makeover
I love looking at beautiful source-code output. However WordPress tends to spit code out in random chunks, often leaving spaces, line breaks, and tabs littered throughout the source output. This messes things up. Lists don’t look like lists and logically written code often appears scattered along the page carelessly. Often, this is the result of poorly written PHP, which can be manipulated to write beautifully aligned code that looks as good as it works. Continue reading »
