BBQ Firewall – Customize Features
BBQ Firewall is a lightweight, super-fast plugin that protects your site against a wide range of threats. BBQ checks all incoming traffic and quietly blocks bad requests containing nasty stuff like eval(, base64_, and excessively long request-strings. This is a simple yet solid solution for sites that are unable to use a strong Apache/.htaccess firewall. Continue reading »
Wutsearch: Search Engine Launchpad
Recently launched a simple one-page website called Wutsearch. Wutsearch is a search-engine launchpad that I use for my homepage. Usually I work with several browsers open, each set to open multiple tabs on startup. For a long time, all those tabs were set to the Google homepage. Then DuckDuckGo. Now, it’s Wutsearch 🚀 Continue reading »
Code Snippets to Customize WordPress Sitemaps (Complete Guide)
By now most have heard about the WP Sitemaps feature introduced in WordPress version 5.5. From what I’ve read most existing sites that needed a sitemap already had one via one of the many free sitemap plugins. But for new WordPress sites going forward, having all the sitemap code in the WordPress core now means that new sites have the option of rolling with the default WordPress sitemaps, or use a dedicated plugin to do the job. This post is […] Continue reading »
7G Firewall: September 2020 Update
Pleased to announce that the 7G Firewall is updated to version 1.3 (September 3rd, 2020). Now available for download, 100% free and open-source as always. Continue reading »
CSS: Center-Align List with Left-Aligned Text (and Unknown Width)
Here is a quick CSS tutorial showing how to center-align a list element with left-aligned text. For example, if you have an <ul></ul> or <ol></ol> of unknown width, and you want it to stay centered on the page and keep the inner text aligned to the left. That’s the trick we’re looking at in this tutorial. Continue reading »
Building the Perishable Press Bookstore
After six months of on-again, off-again hard work (and plenty of unexpected challenges), I am excited to launch the new Perishable Press Bookstore. The old bookstore was located on a separate domain, but I wanted it to be better integrated with the main site here at Perishable Press. So now there is the site blog at perishablepress.com and the store at books.perishablepress.com. Continue reading »
How to Disable Chrome Scroll to Text Fragment
It is debatable whether or not Chrome’s new scrolltotextfragment feature is a significant security concern. When in doubt, play it safe. This quick post explains how to disable (or enable) Chrome’s scroll-to-text-fragment functionality. Continue reading »
All the little .txt files you can put in the root directory of your website
The ones I know of: ads.txt humans.txt robots.txt security.txt This site makes use of robots.txt and humans.txt. I don’t need ads.txt because 3rd-party ads aren’t currently running on the site, and security.txt seems not necessary as the site’s contact form is easy enough for anyone to find. Continue reading »
Weird Bug with Highlight.js
Working on adding syntax highlighting to my code snippets here at Perishable Press. To do it, I use my free WordPress plugin Prismatic. Basically all the plugin does is load up either the Highlight.js scripts and styles, or it loads up the Prism.js scripts and styles. So I can rule out the plugin itself for this “weird” little bug. The issue is with Highlight.js specifically. Continue reading »
Redesign #25: Performance Over Perfection
Welcome to the 2020 (25th!) redesign for Perishable Press. Like many of the previous designs, the new design is super minimal and organic. The #1 goal this time around was to find an optimal balance between performance and aesthetics. Or put another way.. Continue reading »
7G Out of Beta
The 7G Firewall was released about a year ago as beta, and has had time now to mature/develop into a stable release. So this is just a heads up that 7G is now officially out of beta and ready for use in live/production environments. Continue reading »
7G Addon: Stop Aggressive Scanning for Uploads-Related Targets
Around the end of December 2019 and then now well into January of 2020, I’m seeing a massive spike in aggressive malicious scanning for uploads-related targets. In particular, there are massive numbers of requests for URL targets involving uploadify, plupload, and similar. Typical scans hitting upwards of 30K–50K requests per attack. Just relentless exploit scanning on steroids. Continue reading »
How to Modify GET and POST Requests with WordPress
I’ve written before about protecting against malicious POST requests using Apache/.htaccess. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to modify GET and POST requests using PHP and some core WordPress functionality (with no .htaccess required). Normally you would want to manipulate URI requests at the server level, but that’s not always possible (like on shared hosting). So in those cases where you want to modify GET, POST, or other types of requests on a WordPress site, check out the following […] Continue reading »
Case of the Invisible CSS ::selection
Recently I noticed a weird bug in my free WordPress security plugin, Banhammer. For some reason, I could not select any text on the page. Usually when you click and move the mouse cursor over some text, it becomes highlighted and displayed in some other color. But this wasn’t happening on the Banhammer settings screen. No matter which HTML/text I tried to select, it just wasn’t working. T’was a real mystery.. Continue reading »
PHP Code Not Displayed in Browser
Recently a reader sent in a bug report about this post on bbPress. For some reason the PHP code snippets were not displaying properly in the browser. Basically, instead of looking neat and tidy as always, the code looked like a garbled mess of spaced-out nonsense. And by “spaced out” I don’t mean in a good way: there was literally like 100px of vertical space breaking up the jumbled lines of code. It was definitely a mess, so I began […] Continue reading »
Stop WordPress from Changing .htaccess
In a recent tutorial, I explain how to Stop WordPress from modifying .htaccess. That post explains several ways to prevent WordPress from making changes to .htaccess. This post explains an even better way that is safe, effective, non-invasive, re-usable, and super simple. I’ve been using it on my own sites now for a few years and it works flawlessly. Continue reading »
