For those who know, YOURLS makes it super easy to host your own URL shortening service. I use Yourls on several sites and it works great at generating shortlinks for otherwise long and tedious URLs. So they’re easier to share, remember, social media, etc. Yourls is developed by a well-respected developer and is 100% FREE and open source for everyone. It’s a truly great app and highly recommended. Continue reading »
So yesterday I got a new phone and could not log in to my account at WordPress.org. Why? Because I had enabled Two-factor authentication (2FA) on my account as an extra layer of security. I had been completing this 2FA step on my old phone using the Google Authenticator app, which works great. The problem is that I had not yet transferred my Authenticator codes to my new phone. So when I tried to log in to my WordPress.org account, […] Continue reading »
“sMaSh tHe LiKe bUtToN” Back in the day, video clips were simple and straightforward. People who were making videos and sharing them online did so because they had something to say, share, or rant about. These days things are different. Churning out endless video content has become a big money machine. Lifestyle videos. Hilarious pet videos. How to win videos. Acting stupid videos. And anything else you can think of, there are people recording it and putting it out there […] Continue reading »
Lately my some of my WordPress-powered sites have been hit with a very specific brand of comment spam, which may be referred to as “darknet market spam”. The spam is simple but persistent. And there’s a LOT of it. Very annoying. Fortunately it is trivial to stop. Here are a few ways to block teh darknet market spam.. Continue reading »
I enjoy sharing the pathetic phishing emails that make it past my spam filters. After watching various waves of phishing campaigns come and go over the past 20 years, I have come to accept that it’s just a part of life on the Web. Phishing scams have been happening since the dawn of the Internet, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. About the best you can do is practice safe email handling practices and never open any links or […] Continue reading »
There are plenty of ways to sync news feeds across all of your devices. There are free services, paid services, and even scripts that you can host on your server. This quick tutorial explains two ways to sync your feeds on any device. The first method uses the free service from Inoreader, which works via web browser on any device. And the second method combines Inoreader with the Reeder app for a better experience on macOS and iOS. Continue reading »
As a full-time web developer and typical human being, I rely on the Internet for a great many things. So when the Internet is not available, my work (and play) comes to a grinding halt. Fortunately my primary ISP is pretty solid, but it still goes down every once in a while. So to maintain my workflow (and general sanity), having a backup Internet service provider is absolutely essential. Here’s one way to do it.. Continue reading »
I’ve been working on developing the 8G Firewall. Digging through log files and crunching the data, the big new trend I’m noticing is heavy scanning for easy targets, low hanging fruit. Bad actors are looking for any little hidden files stashed on your server. Mostly PHP files, also ZIP and RAR files, and other file formats commonly used for compressing and archiving content. Basically, anything that might contain useful information (like login credentials, database backups, email addresses, etc.). Also, 99% […] Continue reading »
There are many free (and commercial) uptime monitoring services that will alert you if your server goes offline. These services are popular because it’s mission critical to know when your sites are down. The sooner you know about it, the sooner you can scramble to get everything back online. I’ve tried other scripts and services but nothing that met my specific needs: simple, secure, lightweight and blazing fast. So decided roll my own DIY server status monitor and share it […] Continue reading »
Like many of you, I have been working online for years now, more than most. Over the course of the past 20 years, I have created accounts at hundreds and hundreds of websites. That includes all the work-related stuff, like web development, plus LOTS of social media sites, online services for everything from email to security monitoring. Not to mention all of the accounts created for mundane things like banking, utilities, Internet and phone service, and so forth. Continue reading »
Your website’s robots.txt file probably contains some rules that tell compliant search engines and other bots which pages they can visit, and which are not allowed, etc. In most of the robots.txt files that I’ve looked at, all of the Allow and Disallow rules are applied to all user agents. This is done with the wildcard operator, which is written as an asterisk *, like this: User-agent: * This site’s robots.txt file provides a typical example. All of the allow/disallow […] Continue reading »
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience.
Here you will find posts about web development, WordPress, security, and more »
