Following my recent post on CSS code formatting, I was delightfully surprised to have received such insightful, enthusiastic feedback. Apparently, I am not the only person passionate about the subtle nuances involved with the formatting of CSS code. So, to continue the conversation, let’s explore several techniques for writing the opening and closing brackets of CSS declaration blocks. Continue reading »
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 »
![[ Drop Dead Random Images ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/random-images.jpg)
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 »
![[ Preload Images with CSS ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/preload-images-css.jpg)
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
![[ Screenshot: Perishable Tweets Displayed at Perishable Press ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/twitter-tweets.png "Twitter Sucks!")
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 »
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 »
![[ Screenshot: WordPress Autosave Message (Saved at 2:34:02.) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/wp-autosave/time-saved.gif "WordPress automatically saves your work every two minutes")
After upgrading WordPress from version 2.0.5 to 2.3.3, I did some experimenting with the “post autosave” feature. The autosave feature uses some crafty ajax to automagically save your post every 2 minutes (120 seconds by default). Below the post-editing field, you will notice a line of text that displays the time of the most recent autosave, similar to the following: Continue reading »
![[ Image: Jonny Quest (Inverted) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/subscriptions/subscriptions-quest.jpg "jonny123@gmail.com?")
After investigating some unusual 404 errors the other day, I found myself digging through the WordPress Admin Area trying to locate the “Subscribe to Comments” options panel. As it turns out, administrative options for the Subscribe to Comments plugin are split into two different areas. First, the S2C plugin provides configuration options under the WordPress General Settings > “Subscribe to Comments”, which enables users to tweak everything from subscription messages to custom CSS styles. New to me was the other […] Continue reading »
![[ WordPress RSS Feed ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/exclude-feed-content.png)
For future reference, this article covers each of the many ways to access your WordPress-generated feeds1. Several different URL formats are available for the various types of WordPress feeds — posts, comments, and categories — for both permalink and default URL structures. For each example, replace “http://example.com/” with the URL of your blog. Note: even though your blog’s main feed is accessible through many different URLs, there are clear benefits to using a single, consistent feed URL throughout your site. […] Continue reading »
![[ Photo: Bob Barker Pointing at You ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/blacklisted/2008-03-09.jpg "Come on down! You're the next contestant on the 'Blacklist is Right'!")
Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series. In this post, we continue our new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Imagine, if you will, an overly caffeinated Bob Barker, hunched over his favorite laptop, feverishly scanning his server access files. Like some underpaid factory worker pruning defective bobble heads from a Taiwanese assembly line, Bob rapidly identifies and isolates suspicious log entries with laser focus. Upon further investigation, affirmed spammers, scrapers and crackers […] Continue reading »
In this tutorial, I present an easy way to add a little extra flair to your site by adding some dynamic clock functionality. Using unobtrusive JavaScript, a bit of (X)HTML markup, and a dash of PHP (optional), we will create a dynamic clock that degrades gracefully to a static date/time-stamp when JavaScript is unavailable. No need to get all verbose with this one, so let’s dive right in.. Continue reading »
Announcing an improved, Arabic version of my latest WordPress plugin, Contact Coldform. The new version features complete UTF-8 compatibility and has been completely translated to the Arabic language. Here is a detailed breakdown of changes made for the Arabic version: Continue reading »
Continuing my quest to stop comment spam without using plugins, I have decided to disable comments on “old” posts. In my experience, over 90% of comment, trackback and pingback spam occurs on posts that have been online for over a month or so, just long enough to be indexed by the search engines and picked up by spammers. Especially for older posts that have managed to acquire a little page rank, the frequency of spam attempts is far greater than […] Continue reading »
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience.
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