Just a quick post to let people know about the updates now available for my various books and plugins. Basically the entire month of May was spent on plugin and book updates, so here is a quick summary of what’s new. Continue reading »
Today I am pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 Book Giveaway, wherein 9 contestants win free copies of my books — The Tao of WordPress, WordPress Themes In Depth, and .htaccess made easy — including all bonus material and updates. Continue reading »
A few days ago, I launched a Thanksgiving-themed book giveaway for Digging Into WordPress. The post has received some great comments that reminded me of how absolutely awesome people can be. So to chase the feeling and keep the momentum going, I’m giving away more books to 9 lucky winners. 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 »
As mentioned, I’ve been super busy updating stuff, and have new versions available for Digging Into WordPress, .htaccess made easy, and The Tao of WordPress. To celebrate the updates, I’m having a “Fall Sale” on all books, with combo deals available for bundled books. Continue reading »
shapeSpace is the starter template that I use for creating my own WordPress themes and WordPress–powered sites. Over the years, the shapeSpace theme has evolved with WordPress, striking what I find to be a good balance between utility, flexibility, and performance. shapeSpace is basically a starter theme that combines a robust set of theme functions with a lightweight set of template files. It’s a “premium” starter template that’s clean, current, and 100% free and open source (via GPL License). Continue reading »
I’m getting back into the swing of things around here, now stepping it up with a new design, new tools, and lots of updated (and new) content, demos, scripts, and more. Here is a quick rundown of the new design and updated projects.. 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 »
It’s been quiet around here, but I have a good excuse. I spent the last six months writing, designing, and publishing my third book, The Tao of WordPress. This is an excellent book for beginners, students, designers, and basically anyone who wants to learn how to get the most from WordPress. The book “soft-launched” last week, and now I want to share the news with readers here at Perishable Press. Continue reading »
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install and run WordPress MultiSite on a MAMP webserver. Running multiple sites from a single installation simplifies and streamlines administration, and serving it all from a locally installed version of MAMP gives you everything you need to develop your network of sites for the Web. Continue reading »
Free WordPress theme! The dark/minimalist design of the Introspection theme was originally created for a Pink Floyd fan site. After taking the site down to clear room (and time) for new stuff, I felt the design was too sweet to just let rot away in the archives. So after a few days of generalizing Introspection for public use, I’ve made it freely available for download so it can shine on.. Continue reading »
It’s been an amazing year across the board. Here is a quick recap of some of the things I did in 2012. I don’t keep a journal of every little detail, but here are some of the things I remember specifically setting out to do, sort of organized by month. So much more to report, these are just the highlights. Continue reading »
I’m proud to announce the launch of my new book on .htaccess, titled .htaccess made easy. It’s a book I’ve been wanting to write for years, since first getting hooked on .htaccess way back in 2006. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about .htaccess, Apache, security, and web-design in general — with many articles on the topic published here at Perishable Press and elsewhere on the Web. Everyone kept inspiring me to bring it all together and write a book […] Continue reading »
Developing WordPress sites on a local MAMP server provides flexibility, privacy, and security throughout the development process. Setting up a WordPress environment on MAMP is definitely worth the effort, especially if you’re building and testing multiple sites using WordPress’ built-in MultiSite functionality. The easiest and recommended way of setting up WordPress MultiSite is to use sub-directories. So when you create a new site named “business”, it will be located at http://localhost/business/. Here’s a mini-tutorial on how to use sub-domains for […] Continue reading »
In my previous post, I share my technique for Ajax-Powered Error Logs. That tutorial shows you how to set up dynamic error monitoring on any typical website, but the script requires some tweaking to get it working with WordPress. In this quick post, I explain how to set up Ajax Error Logs specifically for WordPress sites. Continue reading »
In this “WordPress 101” video tutorial, we look at WP’s Admin Dashboard. We’ll see how it works, what it can do, and how to customize and clean it up. Customizing the WordPress Dashboard is a great way to help boost productivity and streamline your experience working in the Admin Area. This video screencast shows you how to be a Dashboard Ninja in around six minutes. Continue reading »