![[ Photo: Bob Barker Pointing ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/blacklisted/2008-01-02.jpg "Come on down! You're the next hapless turd to get blocked!")
Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series! In this first post, we begin a new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Every Wednesday, I take a little time to investigate my 404 error logs. In addition to spam, crack attacks, and other deliberate mischief, the 404 logs for Perishable Press contain errors due to missing resources, mistyped URLs, and the occasional bizarre or even suspicious behavior of the search-engine robots. Whenever possible, I […] Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: showing the relatively immense size of the WP-ShortStat table ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/wpstats-flush/stats-table_01.gif "Indeed, after only a month or so, our ss_stats table is over 180,000 rows thick and over 45,000 Kilobytes in size.")
In this article, I present a simple method for dramatically decreasing the size of your WordPress database by partially emptying old data from the WP-ShortStat table via the following SQL command: DELETE FROM `wp_ss_stats` ORDER BY `id` ASC LIMIT n That simple SQL query will truncate n number of rows from a database table named wp_ss_stats. You can of course change the table name and number of rows to whatever is needed. And that is the point of this entire […] Continue reading »
![[ Photo: Macro shot of a Yttrium claw ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/wordpress-plugin.jpg "Unplug Unnecessary Plugins")
In this article, my goal is to help you optimize WordPress by replacing a few common plugins with their correspondingly effective code equivalents. As we all know, WordPress can be a very resource-hungry piece of software, especially when running a million extraneous plugins. Often, many common plugins are designed to perform relatively simple tasks, such as redirect a feed, display a random image, query the database, etc. For those of us comfortable with editing PHP and htaccess code, there is […] Continue reading »
![[ WordPress Core Hacks ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/wp-core-hacks.jpg)
One of the necessary evils associated with creating a highly customized WordPress-powered site involves the inevitable necessity to hack the WordPress core. WordPress is built for mass-consumption and tends to cater to the largest audience possible, making it necessary to bend and poke around the corners to get WordPress to function in a more specific or specialized capacity. Continue reading »
In this article, I present several heavily commented examples of WordPress loops. I have found that many readers appreciate these types of loop examples, as it helps them to understand how the loop works while enabling them to easily copy, paste, and adapt the code for their own purposes. In our first example, we examine a basic WordPress loop. When implemented, this loop will display “x” number of posts, where “x” represents the number specified via the WordPress Admin reading […] Continue reading »
While planning my current site renovation project, I considered changing the format of my permalinks. Reasons for modifying the permalink structure of a site include: Continue reading »
It must be national “update-your-WordPress-plugins” month around here or something. First a completely renovated version of Category LiveBookmarks Plus, then a WP-2.3-compatible facelift for BlogStats PCC, and now a completely widgetized & automated version of the popular AddMySite plugin. Coincidence? — I think not.. Continue reading »
Just a note to announce the release of a new version of BlogStats PCC. BlogStats PCC is a free WordPress plugin that provides an easy way to share your blog’s core statistics with your visitors. You can show off any or all of the following statistics: total number of posts total number of comments total number of categories total number of registered users total number of unregistered users total number of individual, static pages the date of the most recent […] Continue reading »
CLB+ As many WordPress users now realize, there have been many fundamental changes in the new version of WordPress. The latest version of WordPress — 2.3 — features a considerably revamped database structure, including a complete reorganization and redistribution of the wp_categories table. Unfortunately, such database alterations have rendered inoperable many popular plugins, proving quite unfortunate not only for millions of WordPress users, but also for those of us who donate time, effort, and resources toward the development of freely […] Continue reading »
In the hellish battle against spam, many WordPress users have adopted a highly effective trinity of anti-spam plugins: Akismet Bad Behavior Spam Karma This effective triage of free WordPress plugins has served many a WP-blogger well, eliminating virtually 99% of all automated comment-related spam. When spam first became a problem for me, I installed this triple-threat arsenal of anti-spam plugins and immediately enjoyed the results. Although Spam Karma seemed a little invasive and resource-intensive, too much protection seemed far better […] Continue reading »
WordPress users employing permalinks via htaccess to optimize their dynamic URLs transform complicated-looking links such as: http://example.com/blog/index.php?page=33 ..into search-engine friendly links such as: http://example.com/blog/post-title/ Every rewritten URL relies on a common set of htaccess rules to transform the links. The htaccess rules for all WordPress permalinks look like this for root WP installations: Continue reading »
Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh great, not another article about WordPress nofollow!!” Well, if that sounds like you, I have good news! This is the last post (at least for awhile, anyway) concerning all things nofollow, dofollow, and even no-nofollow, for that matter. In fact, this post isn’t even about nofollow! It’s simply a summary of the articles I have written involving nofollow-related topics. The articles fit together so well, one might suppose they were planned deliberately as […] Continue reading »
Is that spam or are you just trying to comment? Removing nofollow attributes from your WordPress-powered site is a great way to encourage comments and attract visitors. Many commentators will leave useful, constructive feedback, but there will always be a few losers who would attempt to game your generous link love. Fortunately, identifying these mindless link whores is relatively easy. Here are a few priceless examples of actual spam (i.e., linked) comments left here at Perishable Press (links removed for […] Continue reading »
Recently, while deliberating an optimal method for eliminating nofollow link attributes from Perishable Press, I collected, installed, tested and reviewed every WordPress no-nofollow/dofollow plugin that I could find. In this article, I present a concise, current, and comprehensive reference for WordPress no-nofollow and dofollow plugins. Every attempt has been made to provide accurate, useful, and complete information for each of the plugins represented below. Further, as this subject is a newfound interest of mine, it is my intention to keep […] Continue reading »
During the most recent Perishable Press redesign, I noticed that several of my WordPress admin pages had been assigned significant levels of PageRank. Not good. After some investigation, I realized that my ancient robots.txt rules were insufficient in preventing Google from indexing various WordPress admin pages. Specifically, the following pages have been indexed and subsequently assigned PageRank: Continue reading »
![[ Image: Detail view of a series of mechanical gears (black and white photo) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/super-loop.png)
Readers occasionally ask for help with their WordPress loops. Usually, these requests involve modifying the loop with some customized functionality. Frequently, such customization involves one of these popular behaviors: Continue reading »
