How to Ask for Help and Get It

[ Screenshot of pathetic Facebook post ]

I see so many technical (and other) questions in forums and social media that go unanswered. Not due to lack of trying, but due to lack of understanding. People posting questions like this (an actual post in a popular PHP group on FB): Continue reading »

How to Disable Chrome Scroll to Text Fragment

It is debatable whether or not Chrome’s new scrolltotextfragment feature is a significant security concern. When in doubt, play it safe. This quick post explains how to disable (or enable) Chrome’s scroll-to-text-fragment functionality. Continue reading »

PHP Code Not Displayed in Browser

[ Screenshot showing proper display of PHP code snippet ]

Recently a reader sent in a bug report about this post on bbPress. For some reason the PHP code snippets were not displaying properly in the browser. Basically, instead of looking neat and tidy as always, the code looked like a garbled mess of spaced-out nonsense. And by “spaced out” I don’t mean in a good way: there was literally like 100px of vertical space breaking up the jumbled lines of code. It was definitely a mess, so I began […] Continue reading »

When, Where, and How to Ask for Help: The Three Golden Rules

When working online or offline in the real world, it’s inevitable that you will encounter issues and problems with products, services, and everything else. This quick post explains when, where, and how to ask for help: The Three Golden Rules. It’s a general guide, aimed at those who may be unfamiliar. Continue reading »

Vanilla JavaScript Smooth Scroll

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 »

CLI Forward-Reverse Lookup

In previous posts, I’ve explained how to verify identity of search engines and other bots, by looking up the host name and then doing a reverse lookup to cross-check the IP address. This is often referred to as a forward-reverse lookup, or something to that effect. The point is, there are plenty of free online tools available for performing forward-reverse IP/host lookups. And online tools are great, but it’s also possible to do forward/reverse lookups directly via the command line, […] Continue reading »

X Theme Leftover Code Snippets

While working on the site’s 24th redesign, I ended up with about 10 code snippets that were awesome but ultimately not needed. So rather than just delete these tasty functions, I am posting them here for future reference. Who knows, during the next site update I may decide to implement or repurpose some of these techniques. And of course sharing is caring, so feel free to use any of these code snippets in your own projects. Check out the Table […] Continue reading »

Basic Webpack Setup

Preparing for Gutenberg, I’ve been sharpening my JavaScript skillz. Getting further into things like Webpack, React, Node.js, and all sort of other awesome scripting adventures. As I dive further into JavaScript land, it’s amazing how much more quickly I am able to do things that I never had to do before relying so heavily on JavaScript. Even so, the extra tools are good to have in the ’ol developer tool belt, so I’ll be sharing much more about JavaScript stuff […] Continue reading »

Trying Different Email Clients for Mac

As a professional web developer slash book author, I spend a LOT of time with email. Recently, I discovered that my email client does not provide some of the functionality that I require. So I set out on a mission to find something that works. Something better. Continue reading »

Tips for Atom Code Editor

For some of my tutorials, I use the Atom Code Editor. It’s not as easy as Coda, but it does provide a LOT more flexibility in terms of configuration and customization. Over the last couple of years, I’ve collected a handful of useful tips and tricks for dialing in the perfect Atom environment. Well, perfect for my own needs — your mileage may vary. So without further ado, let’s jump into some sweet Atom tips. I update this post with […] Continue reading »

Email Troubleshooting Guide

Email is sort of like the “glue” that holds the Internet together. But it’s the worst possible glue ever. It’s underlying technology is convoluted, complicated, insecure, tedious, sloppy, and archaic. In a nutshell: email sucks but it’s pretty much essential for working online. So what do you do if email is not working, like when you send an email but it never arrives? It can be very frustrating and difficult to figure out what went wrong. To help get you […] Continue reading »

Customer Anti-Support

Email support can be great or it can suck horribly. It’s a spectrum. For my own products and services, my average email response time is around 1 hour in general, and 5 minutes if I am online. Seriously, I am right there ready and glad to help anyone who needs it. Contrast that strategy to what seems to be the typical email support response time of an entire day or much longer. It’s just crazy to have to wait that […] Continue reading »

List All Files and Folders Recursively via Terminal

From time to time I have occasion to generate a list all WordPress files or similar. As I’m not an expert in Terminal, it took awhile to figure out the magic recipe.. now having collected some useful commands, I want to post ‘em for future reference. Continue reading »

Dynamic Go-to-Top Link

Instead of displaying a perpetual “go to top” link for every page, here’s a quick way to dynamically display the link only if the content height is greater than that of the browser window. So it’s there when you need it, not when you don’t. Just include the following snippet of jQuery with your design: Continue reading »

jQuery Hover Swap Text

Things have been busy! I’m working on a new book and site and having a blast. I’ll share more on that later, but for now I just want to get back into posting at Perishable Press. To kick it into gear, here is one of the jQuery snippets I’m using at the new book site. Continue reading »

Switching from Firefox to Chrome

I’ve used Firefox as my main browser for years. I’ve always known it to be fast and functional, but for some reason after version 3 or 4, things started getting not so good. For example, each major upgrade leaves me with fewer compatible extensions. And if you don’t remember to disable the auto-updates option, you may be stuck with your favorite extensions not working. I lost some great add-on functionality for the Fx4 -> Fx5 update, but continued using Firefox […] Continue reading »

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