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Farewell to Alex King’s Popularity Contest

I finally broke down and uninstalled Alex King’s once-great “Popularity Contest” plugin for WordPress. The plugin had been active here at Perishable Press for over two years, and had provided fairly consistent and apparently accurate statistics while in service. Unfortunately, there were serious errors involved with the plugin way back during the WordPress-2.3 upgrade that were never addressed by the plugin author. There was an interim version of the plugin that had patched the error until an official update was […] Continue reading »

Critical Review of Dyasonhat’s Premium Smart Sort WordPress Plugin

After hearing about the recently released premium version of Dyasonhat’s Smart Sort Plugin for WordPress, I just had to give it a try. Occasionally working on projects requiring customized ordering of posts, I like to keep my utility belt well-equipped with any plugins or code techniques that will facilitate the process of man-handling post order. In this article, I discuss my experience with WP Smart Sort Premium. Continue reading »

French Version of Contact Coldform Released

Several months after the release of the Arabic and Spanish versions of Contact Coldform, I am pleased to announce the release of a French translation of the plugin. The new French translation is graciously provided by Tony Tohme, who is also helping with the upcoming Russian translation of the Coldform. So huge “Thank you” to Tony! :) Continue reading »

WP Custom Fields, Part II: Tips and Tricks

[ Magnetic Fields ]

As we have seen in our previous post, WordPress Custom Fields Part I, custom fields provide an excellent way to add flexible content to your posts and pages. By assigning various types of content to different custom fields, you gain complete control over when, where, and how to display the associated information. For example, sub-headings may be displayed in the sidebar, footnotes may be consolidated into a single region, post images may be displayed before the post title, and so […] Continue reading »

WordPress Custom Fields, Part I: The Basics

[ Magnetic Fields ]

I recently developed a theme that makes heavy use of WordPress’ custom fields. The custom-field functionality of WordPress makes it possible to rig up just about any customized layout quickly and easily. Custom fields enable designers to organize post content into different sections, making it possible to create non-linear page layouts, with different types of content easily removed from the normal post loop and relocated to different parts of the document. This organizational and design flexibility has the added benefit […] Continue reading »

Redirect WordPress Individual Category Feeds to Feedburner via HTAccess

Time for another Feedburner redirect tutorial! In our previous FeedBurner-redirect post, I provide an improved HTAccess method for redirecting your site’s main feed and comment feed to their respective Feedburner URLs. In this tutorial, we are redirecting individual WordPress category feeds to their respective FeedBurner URLs. We will also look at the complete code required to redirect all of the above: the main feed, comments feed, and of course any number of individual category feeds. Let’s jump into it.. Continue reading »

Perfect WordPress Title Tags Redux

In my previous article on WordPress title tags, How to Generate Perfect WordPress Title Tags without a Plugin, We explore everything needed to create perfect titles for your WordPress-powered site. After discussing the functionality and implementation of various code examples, the article concludes with a “perfect” title-tag script that covers all the bases. Or so I thought.. Some time after the article had been posted, Mat8iou chimed in with a couple of ways to improve thie script by cleaning up […] Continue reading »

WordPress Feedburner HTAccess Redirect for Default (Non-Permalink) Feed URLs

Recently, a client wanted to deliver her blog feed through Feedburner to take advantage of its excellent statistical features. Establishing a Feedburner-delivered feed requires three things: a valid feed URL, a Feedburner account, and a redirect method. For permalink-enabled WordPress feed URLs, configuring the required redirect is straightforward: either install the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin or use an optimized HTAccess technique. Unfortunately, for sites without permalinks enabled, the Feedsmith plugin is effectively useless, and virtually all of the HTAccess methods currently […] Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: Authenticate Lite

[ Icon: Authentic ]

Authenticate Lite is a follow-up version of the original Authenticate custom-content plugin for WordPress. Just as with the full version of Authenticate, Authenticate Lite enables universal and/or targeted inclusion of custom content for both feeds and posts. Ideal for adding copyright information, distribution policy, thank-you messages, custom links, special offers, etc. Custom content may be added to any location within posts or feeds — before, after, or even within post content. This highly flexible content-addition plugin works great on all […] Continue reading »

How to Generate Perfect WordPress Title Tags without a Plugin

[ Perfect Title Tags ]

Keeping an eye on all things WordPress, I have noticed an ongoing fascination with configuring the ultimate WordPress <title></title> tags. Many bloggers use various plugins to generate differently configured <title></title> tags depending on particular page views. A good example of this is seen in the All in One SEO Pack, which, among many other things, enables users to specify custom titles for several different types of pages. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, some of us prefer to […] Continue reading »

Working with Multiple Themes Outside of the WordPress Installation Directory

[ Author Comment Links ]

As you may observe, the WordPress installation that powers Perishable Press is located in a subdirectory named press. This configuration was intentional, as I wanted to have the option to easily install and maintain multiple versions of WordPress in variously named subdirectories. As much as I enjoy this flexibility, many would argue the SEO-related benefits of installing WordPress in your site’s root directory, or at least making it appear that way by using WordPress’ easily customizable “Blog Address” options setting. Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: Authenticate

[ Icon: Authentic ]

Authenticate is a free WordPress plugin that enables universal and/or targeted inclusion of custom content for both feeds and posts. Ideal for adding copyright information, distribution policy, thank-you messages, custom links, special offers, and much more. Custom content may be added to any location within posts or feeds — before, after, or even within post content. This highly flexible content-addition plugin works great on WordPress version 2.0 or better. Continue reading »

Spanish Version of Contact Coldform Released

Great news! Contact Coldform is now available in Spanish (Spain). Special thanks to Fernando Tellado of Ayuda WordPress for his superb Spanish translation of the Coldform. Fernando has articulately translated both the administration panel and all of the (X)HTML/text output as well. Contact Coldform is now the perfect solution for Spanish users of WordPress who desire a super-clean, standards-based contact form. Thanks Fernando! :) For more information about the Spanish translation, check out Fernando’s post, Plugin Contact Coldform en Español. There […] Continue reading »

Preventing the Unpredictable White Screen of Death for WordPress Sites with Multiple Themes

For the past several months and up until just recently, Perishable Press had been suffering from unpredictable episodes of the dreaded white screen of death. Although blank white screens happen to virtually all WordPress users now and then, certain configurations seem to trigger crashes more frequently than others. Here, I am referring to WordPress version 2.3. In this case, the unpredictable crashes, inconsistent errors, and general instability began several months ago after I had completed my WordPress theme restoration project. […] Continue reading »

3 Ways to Exclude Content from WordPress Feeds

[ Exclude Feed Content ]

This may surprise you, but I post quite a bit of content that never appears in the site’s main feed. It is my impression that a vast majority of subscribers are interested in web/graphic-design and development-related topics, and are really much less interested (if at all) in the miscellaneous odds and ends that wind up in the ever-expanding Perishable Press database. In the past, the process of excluding content from the main feed typically involved changing the post-date to something […] Continue reading »

WordPress Hack: Multiple Email Recipients for Contact Coldform

In the current version of my custom contact-form WordPress plugin, Contact Coldform, there is no built-in method of sending emails to multiple addresses. The thought of adding such functionality had not occurred to me until recently, when a Coldform user asked about enabling it. After a bit of investigation, it turns out that integrating multiple-recipient functionality into Contact Coldform is as easy as it is practical. I will definitely be adding this feature to the next release of the Coldform, […] Continue reading »

Welcome
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience. Here you will find posts about web development, WordPress, security, and more »
Blackhole Pro: Trap bad bots in a virtual black hole.
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I disabled AI in Google search results. It was making me lazy.
Went out walking today and soaked up some sunshine. It felt good.
I have an original box/packaging for 2010 iMac if anyone wants it free let me know.
Always ask AI to cite its sources. Also: “The Web” is not a valid answer.
All free plugins updated and ready for WP 6.6 dropping next week. Pro plugin updates in the works also complete :)
99% of video thumbnail/previews are pure cringe. Goofy faces = Clickbait.
RIP ICQ
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