shapeSpace WordPress Theme – Introducing New “Lite” Version
Quick post to announce a new Lite version of my free shapeSpace starter theme. I develop and use shapeSpace for many of my WordPress-powered projects. The lightweight bare-bones template speeds up development by providing everything I need to create awesome themes. When it’s time to build a new site, or redesign an existing one, I download a copy of shapeSpace and I’m off to the races. Continue reading »
4 Ways to Make a WordPress Site Private Access Only
Have you ever wanted to make a WordPress site private? So that only specific users are allowed access? For example, for my found-images site eChunks.com, I decided to require user login in order to access any content. So now for that site, public access is not allowed, and any posts, images, and all other content is available only to logged-in users. This tutorial explains four ways to make a WordPress site private or members only, so that only authenticated/trusted users […] Continue reading »
Free WordPress Plugin: Disable Application Passwords
Launching a free plugin to disable the new Application Passwords feature introduced in WordPress version 5.6. The plugin is one line of code. Install and activate to completely disable all of the Application Passwords functionality. To re-enable all Application Passwords, simply deactivate/uninstall the plugin. Easy peasy. Continue reading »
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 »
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 »
New Plugins for WordPress 5.5
Forgotten post! I wrote this article way back for WordPress 5.5 but forgot to publish. Rather than delete I am posting it now. I think the information remains relevant for the most part. Read with a grain of salt :) WordPress 5.5 brings some new features that may help a lot of users. The two biggies: sitemaps and lazy loading images. This rundown post explains a bit about each, and shares some free plugins to help should you need to […] Continue reading »
About the Auto-Generated WP Sitemaps and How to Disable Using Simple Code or a Free Plugin
WordPress 5.5 and beyond features built-in sitemaps that are enabled by default. For new users and sites this may be a good thing. Now users don’t have to bother with thinking about how to implement a sitemap. Like with Privacy control, WordPress just does it for you automagically. BUT for the millions of sites that already have a sitemap thanks to any of the excellent and free sitemap plugins — that’s like maybe 5–10 million websites — well congratulations you […] Continue reading »
WordPress Plugin: Disable Media Sizes
Whenever you upload an image using the Media Library, WordPress automatically creates a set of alternate-size images. The number and size of these auto-generated images continues to grow each year, as WordPress tries to keep up with increasingly hi-resolution screen sizes. For many WordPress-powered websites, the extra media sizes enable WordPress to serve images responsively and that’s a good thing. But for some WordPress sites, all the extra images simply are not necessary. In some cases downright wasteful. And that’s […] Continue reading »
WordPress Plugin: Disable Lazy Load
WordPress 5.5 brings some cool new features, including built-in support for lazy-loading images. So whether you want it or not, WordPress will add a new “loading” attribute to all of your images. That way supportive browsers will be able to load your images as the user scrolls the page, instead of trying to load everything at once. It’s a popular front-end technique that may help to boost performance a little bit. Like anything else, there are pros and cons to […] 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 »
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience.
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