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 »
I’ve been developing WordPress chat plugins for over 10 years, and have received tons of great user feedback for the free version of Simple Ajax Chat (SAC). So many ideas and ways to improve the plugin that it just made sense to bring it all together and build a new “pro” version. So after several months of intense plugin development, I am excited to launch my latest WordPress plugin, SAC Pro. SAC Pro is completely rewritten from the ground up, […] Continue reading »
![[ WordPress: Shared Hosting ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2019/wordpress-shared-hosting.jpg)
After months of hard work, my latest LinkedIn/Lynda.com video course has launched! The course walks through the entire process of getting WordPress installed and running on shared hosting. If you’re new to WordPress or the Internet in general, and want to start your own WordPress-powered website, this course will help you do it as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Continue reading »
While working on the site’s 24th redesign, my goal was to simplify the UI as much as possible. As much as I enjoy lots of cool effects, I wanted the new design to be as minimalist as possible. So that meant dropping a LOT of little bells and whistles that were included in the previous design. One feature that didn’t make the cut was smooth scrolling to internal anchor targets. Like when you click a link that takes you #somewhere […] Continue reading »
![[ Contact Form X ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2018/contact-form-x.jpg)
Welcome to the official homepage for my free WordPress plugin, Contact Form X (CFX). This is a more personal look at the plugin, aimed at readers who are familiar with my work. Here you’ll find some screenshots, cool features, and of course some rambling backstory (because there is one). If you are looking for official plugin documentation, visit Contact Form X at WordPress.org. There you will find docs, download, installation steps, support forum, translation tools, and more. Continue reading »
![[ WordPress: Plugin Development ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2017/wordpress-plugin-development.jpg)
After months of hard work, I am excited to announce the launch of my new video course on developing WordPress plugins. It covers the entire process of building, securing, and optimizing your own plugins, including 50+ ready-to-go plugin demos and examples. The course is focused on developing plugins using the WP API and Standards. Covers basics and gets into advanced topics like HTTP API, REST API, and WP Cron. Truly packed with practical examples and techniques to help you create […] Continue reading »
This post contains overflow FAQs for the free version of User Submitted Posts (hosted at WordPress.org). I am moving a bunch of the FAQs to this post in order to clean up the plugin’s ever-growing readme.txt file. For FAQs about the Pro version of USP, check out USP Pro – FAQs & Presales over at Plugin Planet. Note that these FAQs are in no particular order. So without further ado.. Continue reading »
![[ Black Hole (Figurative) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2010/blackhole/blackhole-04.jpg)
Welcome to the Quick Start Guide for the standalone PHP version of Blackhole for Bad Bots. This post basically is a condensed summary of the original Blackhole tutorial. So if you are new to the concept of blocking bad bots, check out the original tutorial. Otherwise, for those that are familiar, the following guide should simplify things and help you get started with Blackhole as quickly as possible. Continue reading »
In this tutorial, I’m going to walk you through how you can add a new menu in WordPress Admin Area, where your users will be able to import any demo content — including widgets, their positions and navigation as well — by a single click. The code follows the best WordPress practices, uses WP Filesystem for file management, includes escaping and all text strings are prepared for translation. It also passes the WordPress theme check plugin! Continue reading »
![[ WordPress: Developing Secure WordPress Sites ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2016/secure-wordpress-sites.png)
After months of preparation and production, my new video course on developing secure WordPress sites is now available at Lynda.com. This is my second video course on securing WordPress; the first one was originally launched in 2011 and remained in Lynda’s library for over five years. I received a lot of great feedback on the course, and so I jumped on the opportunity to do another one. If there is one thing that I enjoy doing, it’s helping people with […] Continue reading »
![[User Enumeration ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2016/user-enumeration.jpg)
This tutorial explains how to block user-enumeration scans in WordPress. As explained in greater depth here, user enumeration happens when some malicious script scans a WordPress site for user data by requesting numerical user IDs. For example, requests for author=1 through some number, say, author=1000, may reveal the usernames for all associated users. With a simple enumeration script, an attacker can scan your site and obtain a list of login names in a matter of seconds. Continue reading »
The free version of my WordPress plugin User Submitted Posts is better than ever, with a wealth of new action and filter hooks, enabling developers to customize everything from shortcode output to post data, alert messages and more. Drop in for a quick summary of all new USP hooks. Continue reading »
Book Launch! My fourth book, WordPress Themes In Depth, focuses entirely on WordPress theme development. It goes in-depth on how to build, customize, and distribute your own WordPress themes. It’s 10+ years of experience with WordPress jam-packed into 450 pages of non-stop theme-building action. Continue reading »
In this tutorial I am going to show you how to build a pure CSS drop down menu in WordPress. I will walk you through the steps of creating a menu in WordPress, customizing it with CSS, and then printing the menu in your theme file. This tutorial requires that you have access to edit your WordPress theme files and also a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. I will walk through the process step-by-step so don’t worry if you […] Continue reading »
Another update! This time to the vanilla/PHP version of my Ajax Error Log. As with the new WordPress version, this update improves the script’s design, performance, and security. Continue reading »
New version of Ajax-Powered Error Logs for WordPress now available for download. The functionality is the same, but the script is rewritten for better design, performance, and security. Continue reading »
