Dynamic Go-to-Top Link
Instead of displaying a perpetual “go to top” link for every page, here’s a quick way to dynamically display the link only if the content height is greater than that of the browser window. So it’s there when you need it, not when you don’t. Just include the following snippet of jQuery with your design: Continue reading »
New Theme!
Yep, just when you thought I was moving on with my life, I spend another month on a new theme. My problem is that I tend to listen to criticism. And my previous theme received plenty of it. People just thought it was too much, too sloppy, too busy, too colorful, too ugly, too lame, and you get the idea. For the record, I think the Unicorner theme is fun and awesome, looking great and visually appealing on my iMac. […] Continue reading »
Stream Video Player / swfobject Hack
During the recent redesign, I discovered that my newer WP installation (v3.3.1) had been hacked. I get this email first thing in the morning: Continue reading »
Perishable Press 2012 Redesign
Welcome to the new site! So many changes I don’t even know where to begin.. I think for now the design is beta so I’ll hold off on a big lengthy explanation and just keep an eye on things for awhile.. I guess this post is a good place to mention anything weird or broken that’s happened after the new design went live.. Definitely more updates on the way :) Continue reading »
PayPal Phishing Spam
Just a heads up to anyone else getting the occasional PayPal phishing spam.. Usually it’s pretty easy to spot one of those crafty phishing emails, just hover over any links before clicking to view the real URL in the status bar. You know, the link says something like, “click here to restore your PayPal account,” but you know that’s garbage and could easily prove it by checking the actual link URL, which is usually something completely bonkers, like: Continue reading »
5G Blacklist 2012
The 5G Blacklist helps reduce the number of malicious URL requests that hit your website. It’s one of many ways to improve the security of your site and protect against evil exploits, bad requests, and other nefarious garbage. If you’re tired of all the slow, bloated security plugins and expensive 3rd-party services, the 5G Blacklist is a solid solution to help protect your Apache-powered site. Continue reading »
jQuery Hover Swap Text
Things have been busy! I’m working on a new book and site and having a blast. I’ll share more on that later, but for now I just want to get back into posting at Perishable Press. To kick it into gear, here is one of the jQuery snippets I’m using at the new book site. Continue reading »
5G Blacklist for Microsoft IIS
By design the 5G Blacklist works on Apache servers, but thanks to Scott Stawarz, here is a version for Microsoft IIS. Disclaimer: I do not use any Microsoft server stuff, so make sure to properly test everything before running this code on a live/production site. Also, if you scroll down to the end of this article, you will find some useful bonus snippets. Continue reading »
Roll Your Own “What’s My IP Address?” Page
My current ISP likes to keeps things spicy by changing my IP address every few months or so. There are a million ways to get this changing IP information, but as an obsessive web developer, I like to roll my own whenever possible. That means using my own resources instead of spending time and energy elsewhere. So the goal for this project is to create a web page that does one thing very well: display the visitor’s current IP information. […] Continue reading »
What Happened to Delicious.com?
What happened to Delicious.com? I logged in today after a week or so and everything is gone. Well okay, not everything, but somehow many features have completely disappeared. After scouring as many options and settings as I could find, there seems to be some serious problems at the new Delicious.com. Continue reading »
WordPress MultiSite Subdomains on MAMP
Developing WordPress sites on a local MAMP server provides flexibility, privacy, and security throughout the development process. Setting up a WordPress environment on MAMP is definitely worth the effort, especially if you’re building and testing multiple sites using WordPress’ built-in MultiSite functionality. The easiest and recommended way of setting up WordPress MultiSite is to use sub-directories. So when you create a new site named “business”, it will be located at http://localhost/business/. Here’s a mini-tutorial on how to use sub-domains for […] Continue reading »
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 »
Switching from Firefox to Chrome
I’ve used Firefox as my main browser for years. I’ve always known it to be fast and functional, but for some reason after version 3 or 4, things started getting not so good. For example, each major upgrade leaves me with fewer compatible extensions. And if you don’t remember to disable the auto-updates option, you may be stuck with your favorite extensions not working. I lost some great add-on functionality for the Fx4 -> Fx5 update, but continued using Firefox […] 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 »