How to Block Proxy Servers via htaccess
Not too long ago, a reader going by the name of bjarbj78 asked about how to block proxy servers from accessing her website. Apparently, bjarbj78 had taken the time to compile a proxy blacklist of over 9,000 domains, only to discover afterwards that the formulated htaccess blacklisting strategy didn’t work as expected. Here is the ineffective htaccess directive that was used: Deny from proxydomain.com proxydomain2.com Blacklisting proxy servers by blocking individual domains seems like a futile exercise. Although there are […] Continue reading »
The Pros and Cons of Blogging
Among my friends, family, coworkers, and other social acquaintances, there are not many “bloggers.” In fact, there aren’t any. Two or three of my old friends have websites that are updated once or twice per year, but none are actively blogging and sharing their ideas with the online community. Many of my “non-blogging” peeps simply don’t “get it.” To them, the whole idea of consistently updating a website with new material seems like a big waste of time. In fact, […] Continue reading »
Drop-Dead Easy Random Images via PHP
Recently, while restoring my collection of Perishable Press themes, I needed a fast, effective way to randomize a series of images using PHP. After playing around with several possibilities, I devised the following drop-dead easy technique: Continue reading »
Pure CSS: Better Image Preloading without JavaScript
After reading my previous article on preloading images without JavaScript1, Nanda pointed out that adding extra markup to preload images is not the best approach, especially where Web Standards are concerned. Mobile devices, for example, may experience problems when dealing with the following preloading technique: /* ADD THIS TO CSS */ div#preloaded-images { position: absolute; overflow: hidden; left: -9999px; top: -9999px; height: 1px; width: 1px; } <!– ADD THIS TO XHTML –> <div id="preloaded-images"> <img src="https://perishablepress.com/image-01.png" width="1" height="1" alt="Image 01" […] Continue reading »
How to Edit the Firefox Custom Dictionary
As one who takes full advantage of the custom dictionary in Firefox, I occasionally find myself adding nonexistent or misspelled words to the dictionary by accident. Not wanting to deal with a false negative down the road, I always take the time to stop what I’m doing, locate the custom dictionary, and remove the erroneous term. Finally getting sick of trying to remember the esoteric location in which Firefox stores the personal dictionary, I decided to make a few notes […] Continue reading »
Perishable Press Gets Naked
In celebration of CSS Naked Day, Perishable Press has disabled it’s CSS stylesheet for today, April 9th, 2008 (which also happens to be my 36th birthday)! What a great way to celebrate the occasion. What are you waiting for? Go get naked!! ;) Continue reading »
Comment Policy
Before you post a comment at Perishable Press, please take a moment to review the official comment policy. Here is a quick overview: Comments on posts are open to everyone for 90 days*. Name and email required. Email kept private, never shared. The form accepts basic HTML. Line and paragraph breaks automatic. Please wrap any code with tags. I reserve the right to edit/delete any comment. Please stay on topic and comment intelligently. Continue reading »
Three Unsolved WordPress Mysteries
After several years of using WordPress, I have at least three unanswered questions: What’s up with the WordPress PHP Memory Error? Why do certain phrases trigger 403 “Forbidden” errors when saving or publishing posts? What happened to the Plugin Pages in the WordPress Codex? Let’s have a look at each one of these baffling mysteries.. Continue reading »
Obsessive CSS Code Formatting: Patterns and Trends
Call me strange, but I format each of my CSS rules according to the following structure/pattern: div#example element { margin: 5px 15px 5px 0; border: 1px solid #444; line-height: 1.5em; text-align: center; background: #222; font-size: 10px; display: block; padding: 5px; color: #888; float: left; } div#another div.example element { border: 1px solid #444; margin: 7px 0 17px 0; letter-spacing: 1px; font-weight: bold; background: #222; font-size: 1.1em; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 3px; width: 308px; color: #888; clear: left; float: left; […] Continue reading »
WordPress Themes: Alphabet Series
Since the launch of Perishable Press way back in 2005, I’ve been working on a series of “alphabet themes”, where each new WordPress theme design is named with a different letter of the alphabet. This began in 2005 with the first alphabet theme, “A” for Apathy. Several months later, the next theme design was “B” for Bananaz. Then “C” for Casket, and so on and so forth. An entire set of 26 WordPress themes, one for each letter of the […] Continue reading »
Content Negotiation for XHTML Documents via PHP and htaccess
In this article, I discuss the different MIME types available for XHTML and explain a method for serving your documents with the optimal MIME type, depending on the capacity of the user agent. Using either htaccess or PHP for content negotiation, we can serve complete, standards-compliant markup for our document’s header information. This is especially helpful when dealing with Internet Explorer while serving a DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.1 along with the recommended XML declaration. According to the RFC standards1 produced […] Continue reading »
Redirect WordPress Feeds to Feedburner via htaccess (Redux)
In a previous article, I explain how to redirect your WordPress feeds to Feedburner. Redirecting your WordPress feeds to Feedburner enables you to take advantage of their many freely provided, highly useful tracking and statistical services. Although there are a few important things to consider before optimizing your feeds and switching to Feedburner, many WordPress users redirect their blog’s two main feeds — “main content” and “all comments” — using either a plugin or directly via htaccess. Here is the […] Continue reading »
More Killer CSS Resets
Just a note to let everyone know that I have updated my previous CSS reference article, A Killer Collection of Global CSS Reset Styles. The updated version features two more excellent CSS resets, as well as the updated Meyer reset and a link to Eric’s official CSS Reset page. The two new reset styles are the Tripoli Reset and Tantek’s Reset. Continue reading »
How to Display Your Twitter Posts on Your WordPress Blog
Alright, time for another “How’d-you-do-that-thing-on-your-site?” post. This question comes from the one and only Mr. Graham of ImJustCreative.com. In a recent email, Graham literally begged me to share my “secret recipe” for displaying my latest Twitter Tweets (wow, did I actually just say that?) right here on Perishable Press: …Would be really really decent of you if you could let me know how to do it? Pretty please? How do you call the last twitter feed, what commands do you […] Continue reading »
CSS/(X)HTML Tutorial: Hovering Accessibility Jump Menu
Recently, a reader named Don asked about this theme’s accessibility (accesskey) jump menu located at the top of each page. Several people have commented that they like the way the jump menu “lights up” upon gaining focus. Whenever a user hovers their cursor over the region at the top of the page, all links in the jump menu change to a more visible color. Then, as the cursor moves over the various menu items, each jump link is further highlighted […] Continue reading »
Custom HTTP Errors via htaccess
We all know how important it is to deliver sensible, helpful 404 error pages to our visitors. There are many ways of achieving this functionality, including the well-known htaccess trick used to locally redirect users to custom error pages: # htaccess custom error pages ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html ..and so on. These directives basically tell Apache to deliver the designated documents for their associated error types. Many webmasters and […] Continue reading »