After announcing my intention to redesign Perishable Press, I received some great feedback addressing everything from site architecture and navigation to appearance and usability. As the conversations continue, I want to spend some time thinking about usability, navigation, columns and sidebars. The current minimalist design features a single column layout with no sidebars. Content is located prominently front and center, with all navigational links appearing in either the oversized “footer” area or at the end of each individual post. As […] Continue reading »
Recently, I have been getting a lot of requests for multiple-loop configurations in WordPress. It seems that multiple-column, multiple-loop configurations are in high demand these days, especially ones that display posts like this: First column, first loop: display posts #1-5 Second column, second loop: display posts #6-10 Third column, third loop: display posts #11-15 Using WordPress and a little CSS, this configuration is relatively easy to accomplish. Let’s cut right to the chase.. Continue reading »
I want to redesign Perishable Press. The current design was released around a year ago, and has received numerous compliments and criticisms. Compliments tend to focus on the theme’s minimalist sensibilities, while criticism is generally directed at the design’s poor usability. Personally, I find the “grey-on-black” color scheme to be very inspiring. Others, however, have difficulties reading the content, and that’s not good. Continue reading »
More and more these days, we are all finding WordPress being used as a content management system. It shouldn’t be too tough to see why — highly customizable, a community growing in size and knowledge, and a plethora of options in the way of plugins and simple yet highly effective PHP edits. Thanks to these, you have access to an open source script that allows you to show what you want, when you want, where you want, and how you […] Continue reading »
It’s been awhile since my last personal news post, and I figure that enough has been happening to warrant yet another exciting news update. Yay! ;) So let’s see, first on my mind is the recent launch of the new design for Monzilla Media, the official site for my personal website and graphic design business. The first two versions of the site were single-page brochure sites, but this new version is fully loaded, featuring tons of portfolio content, business news, and […] Continue reading »
![[ Diagram: Default WordPress Post Display Order ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/horiz-order/horizontal-order_default.gif)
Most WordPress-powered blogs display posts in sequential order within a single column. Like this, for example: Continue reading »
![[ Perfect Title Tags ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/wp-title-deco.jpg)
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 »
![[ Author Comment Links ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/author-comment-links.jpg)
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 »
![[ Thumbnail: Apathy Icon ]](/wp/wp-content/images/2008/perish-themes/Apathy-150.jpg)
Since the launch of Perishable Press way back in 2005, I’ve been working on a series of “alphabet themes”, where each new WordPress theme design is named with a different letter of the alphabet. This began in 2005 with the first alphabet theme, “A” for Apathy. Several months later, the next theme design was “B” for Bananaz. Then “C” for Casket, and so on and so forth. An entire set of 26 WordPress themes, one for each letter of 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 »
During my last redesign and site overhaul, I finally made the leap from WP 2.0 to 2.3. In the process of synchronizing data and removing unecessary plugins, I managed to replace several keyword- and meta-related plugins with the incredible All in One SEO Pack (AiOSEO). One of the plugins replaced by AiOSEO is Autometa, an otherwise very useful meta-keywords management tool. With AiOSEO installed, there is no need for Autometa. Over the course of a year or so, Autometa had […] Continue reading »
How to streamline and maximize the effectiveness of your WordPress URLs by using htaccess to remove extraneous post-date information: years, months, and days.. Recently, there has been much discussion about whether or not to remove the post-date information from WordPress permalinks1. Way back during the WordPress 1.2/1.5 days, URL post-date inclusion had become very popular, in part due to reports of potential conflicts with post-name-only permalinks. Throw in the inevitable “monkey-see, monkey-do” mentality typical of many bloggers, and suddenly an […] Continue reading »
Recently, while attempting to optimize site performance, I found myself experimenting with various caching mechanisms currently available for WordPress. Specifically, I explored each of the following caching options: Continue reading »
![[ Image: Death-metal rocker drunk with power ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/ultimate-nofollow-blacklist.jpg "Behold the power of ultimate blacklist!")
Several days ago, I posted an article explaining how to hack your own WordPress nofollow blacklist. Immediately thereafter, I published an elaborate article focusing on automatic methods of nofollow blacklisting via WordPress plugins. In this article, I expand on the original blacklist hack by incorporating functional differentiation between commentator links, trackbacks, and pingbacks. If anything, think of this as an exercise in hacking WordPress, rewarding in and of itself, if not otherwise entirely impractical. Of course, whenever possible, you should […] Continue reading »
![[ Image: Inverted Eye Detail ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/dofollow-whitelist.jpg)
Before repenting of my filthy “nofollow” addiction, I experimented briefly with a “dofollow whitelist” for commentator URL links. The idea behind the whitelist is to reward frequent commentators, feed subscribers, site patrons, and other guests by selectively removing the automatically generated nofollow attributes from their associated comment-author links. For nofollow enthusiasts, a dofollow whitelist is a great way to show appreciation for people who support your blogging efforts. Now, before we go hacking away at WordPress, keep in mind that […] Continue reading »
![[ Image: Extreme close-up of an eye (send email to purchase a full-size version) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/nofollow-blacklist.jpg)
Previously, in our unofficial “WordPress dofollow upgrade” series, we dished several techniques for removing the antisocial nofollow attributes from default installations of WordPress. After an exhaustive review of available dofollow plugins, we explained how drop-dead easy it is to transform any WordPress blog into a well-standing member of the dofollow community without relying on a plugin to do the job. Our next article detailed a nofollow removal hack that selectively targets pingbacks, trackbacks, and commentator links. Then, we went off […] Continue reading »
