For years, I’ve not used ModSecurity for any of my own sites. Way back when I first tried ModSecurity, there were just too many false positives, so I stayed away from it, opting instead to develop my own fast Apache/.htaccess firewall. But my web host now is telling me that ModSecurity is required on all of their managed VPS plans. Continue reading »
Pardon my dust! I am in the process of switching over to the site’s new design. Please report anything weird, otherwise please pardon my dust as the site settles in with its new theme :) Will post a full report soon! Continue reading »
This year has been full of change, hard work, and lots of planning. First it was general clean-up, reorganization, and streamlining of online assets (e.g., axing unused domains, consolidating email addresses, closing old social media accounts, etc.). That may not sound like a lot of work, but after 15+ years working online, it was a LOT of stuff to go through and get organized. My goal is to simplify my process down to a focused stream of activity. This post […] Continue reading »
![[ Comparing differences in the Plesk Migration Manager ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2012/mt-dv-migration-manager.jpg)
About a month ago, I received an email letting me know that my host, Media Temple, is discontinuing their (dv) Dedicated Virtual 3.0-3.5 servers. Everyone hosted on the old servers must migrate to the new (dv) 4.0 servers. The friendly (mt) email says: The migration is a fairly simple process and you’ll have until early summer to complete it. Having now performed the migration, I can assure you that solid preparation is required to make it a smooth and “fairly […] Continue reading »
![[ Photo: Jeff Starr (aka Perishable) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/global/Jeff-Starr_2008.jpg "Jeff Starr 2008")
Perishable Press provides high-quality, in-depth articles on web design and development, graphic design, social media, blogging, software, and more. Learn how to use WordPress, PHP, SQL, HTAccess, JavaScript, (X)HTML, and CSS to create beautiful sites that are usable, accessible, and secure. Good Day Sunshine Perishable Press is the virtual playground of Jeff Starr — visionary, founder and lead developer of Monzilla Media, a small web and graphic design company located in the lush desert oasis of Moses Lake, Washington. Perishable […] Continue reading »
After announcing my intention to redesign Perishable Press, I received some great feedback addressing everything from site architecture and navigation to appearance and usability. As the conversations continue, I want to spend some time thinking about usability, navigation, columns and sidebars. The current minimalist design features a single column layout with no sidebars. Content is located prominently front and center, with all navigational links appearing in either the oversized “footer” area or at the end of each individual post. As […] Continue reading »
I want to redesign Perishable Press. The current design was released around a year ago, and has received numerous compliments and criticisms. Compliments tend to focus on the theme’s minimalist sensibilities, while criticism is generally directed at the design’s poor usability. Personally, I find the “grey-on-black” color scheme to be very inspiring. Others, however, have difficulties reading the content, and that’s not good. Continue reading »
Just a note to announce a site upgrade to WordPress 2.3.3. The upgrade went well, but overall server performance continues to suffer. I am aware that some people are experiencing difficulties leaving comments and even accessing the site in general. Rest assured, I am working with my hosting company, A Small Orange, to get everything back on track and running smooth. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the issues, restore full functionality, and return […] Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: Awstats Annual Stats ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/site-stats/awstats_annual.gif "This Awstat bar graph displays a general upward trend in all categories: number of visits, unique visits, hits, pages, and bandwidth")
One of the year-end maintenance rituals that I have decided to adopt involves sharing a few annual site statistics for Perishable Press. Over the course of the previous year, Perishable Press has gone through many changes, including switching servers multiple times, eliminating nofollow attributes from comments, and even a complete site overhaul and restructuring. Despite the chaos surrounding such events, traffic levels have continued to increase, bounce rates have steadily decreased, and the number of feed subscribers continues to grow. […] Continue reading »
![[ Server Mayhem ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/server-mayhem.jpg)
Just when I thought I had finally solved my web-hosting woes by transferring to a virtual private server, I am slapped in the face by the cold realities of server memory limitations. Apparently, WordPress-powered sites are extremely resource-intensive, requiring insane amounts of random access memory (RAM), something which does not concern those of us working from shared hosting accounts. On a shared server, system resources are shared among the various accounts that reside on a particular server. When one of […] Continue reading »
..And we’re back. After an insane week spent shopping for a new host, dealing with some Bad Behavior, and transferring Perishable Press to its new home on a virtual private server (VPS), everything is slowly falling back into place. Along the way, there have been some interesting challenges and many lessons learned. Here are a few of the highlights.. Continue reading »
Hello! If you are seeing this page via the default WordPress theme (i.e., blue header, based on Kubrick), welcome to the new server! I recently upgraded my hosting to a virtual private server, and finally reassigned the domain name servers to resolve to the new address. So, if you are here and everything seems to be working, then everything went according to plan and I will be able to complete the transfer on Saturday (Lord willing). If, on the other […] Continue reading »
Hello! As many of you already know, the popular WordPress anti-spam plugin, Bad Behavior, caused some problems yesterday, and as a result many bloggers and users were locked out of their favorite sites, including this one. As for now, the problem seems to be fixed, however, the experience of being locked out of my own site has left a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth. Needless to say, I will be reconsidering the continued use of Bad Behavior as a […] Continue reading »
Just a note to let everyone know that Perishable Press will be undergoing site maintenance for the next several hours. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this might cause. Thanks for your patience ;) Continue reading »
When I first began Perishable Press, I intended the site to focus primarily on the creative side of web and graphic design. However, I also wanted to share equally my ideas and experiences involving music, video, and other multimedia avenues of creative expression. Further, because I enjoy writing, and find myself frequently focusing on art, inspiration, and artistic expression, the initial plan encompassed a perpetual exploration and presentation of these topics here at Perishable Press. Two years later, the original […] Continue reading »
My apologies for recent periods of site unavailability. Apparently, my hosting company is having a difficult time with the server that happens to host Perishable Press. As far as I can tell, the server problems began Wednesday morning (due to a “traffic spike”). By Thursday morning, Perishable Press (as well as a few of my other sites) had been down for a period exceeding eight nonconsecutive hours. According to my log files, Thursday itself was even worse, with server uptime […] Continue reading »
