WordPress Plugin: Simple Statistics for Feeds

Simple Statistics for Feeds is a free WordPress plugin that makes it easy to track your feeds, add custom content, and display your feed statistics on your site. Simple Statistics for Feeds (SFS) tracks your feeds automatically, and provides a wealth of tools and options for further configuration and management. To see Simple Statistics for Feeds in action, check out my code-snippets site, WP-Mix.com (you can find the SFS count badge in the sidebar on any page). Continue reading »

SFS Open Tracking

In the Simple Feed Stats plugin, Open Tracking enables you to track any web page or feed anywhere on the Web. This is done by using the open-tracking URL as the src for any <img /> tag. The SFS plugin then collects and displays the data, and provides shortcodes and template tags to display your feed stats anywhere on your site. In this post, we’ll see how to implement Open Tracking, walk through some examples, and glean a few tips […] Continue reading »

Clean Markup Widget for WordPress

Squeaky clean. When adding content to your sidebar, it’s nice to be able to output clean, well-formatted markup. There are several ways to do this, including adding HTML directly in the theme template, installing a plugin, or simply using a widget. Widgets provide a great way of customizing sidebars and other widgetized areas, but as you may have seen in the source-code, the HTML is treated with all sorts of additional attributes, elements, and classes. Sometimes, you just need a […] Continue reading »

Ron Paul 2012 WordPress Plugin

[ Screenshot: RP2012 Plugin - Circle style ]

I wanted to show support for Ron Paul on my WordPress website with a simple badge or button. Surprised at not finding any plugins for Ron Paul in the Directory, I decided to be the first. You can learn more in the following post, or download and install via the WordPress Plugin Directory. Or if you prefer, you can install direct via the comfort of the WP Admin Area, via Plugins > Add New. Just search for “Ron Paul 2012” […] Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: GA Google Analytics

I’ve joked that there a million different Google Analytics WordPress plugins available, but I’ve never been able to find one that’s just dead-simple, plug-n-play, and with clean code and markup, so I wrote my own that does just that: a no-frills way to add the new Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code to all pages on your WordPress-powered site. This analytics plugin is lightweight, fast, and now has over 50,000 80,000 active users via WordPress.org. Continue reading »

Digging Into WordPress 24-Hour Sale

Want to get Digging Into WordPress for almost half off the regular price? AppSumo is running an exclusive 24-hour sale for the PDF version of DigWP. Recently updated for WordPress 3.1, the book has never been better, providing the tips, tricks, and techniques you need to take WordPress to the next level. Head on over to AppSumo to take advantage of this incredible deal! Continue reading »

Digging Into WordPress 3.1 Update

Digging Into WordPress is now updated for WordPress 3.1. This is the book’s 8th major update, with new material for WordPress 3.1 and extensive revisions throughout. Without a doubt, Digging Into WordPress is more focused and current than ever before. Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: User Submitted Posts

User Submitted Posts enables your visitors to submit posts and images from anywhere on your site via template tag or shortcode. User-submitted posts optionally include tags, categories, post titles, and more. You can set submitted posts as draft, publish immediately, or after some number of approved posts. Also enables users to upload multiple images when submitting a post. Everything super-easy to customize via Admin Settings page. Continue reading »

Yoast WP SEO vs All in One SEO

Rambling introduction. While setting things up here at Perishable Press with a second installation of WordPress, I’m trying to keep the number of custom functions and plugins down to a minimum. Seriously, if some feature or function is not absolutely necessary, then it gets kicked to the curb, as they say. So far, I’m using only the following plugins for the second WordPress installation: Continue reading »

Notes on Switching Servers

Switching servers & migrating sites can be a HUGE deal (or not), depending on things like: Number of sites to transfer Size and complexity of sites Who is hosting your sites Experience I recently did this, switching from a 3-year run at ASO to my new home at Media Temple. Total of 24 properties, with WordPress running on around 10 sites. Past experience with VPS servers really had me paranoid about running out of memory. A few years ago, Perishable […] Continue reading »

Importing WordPress Users via CSV Files

I recently did some time in Microsoft Excel, preparing large CSV files for import into WordPress. Each of these CSV files contained data for 1000 WordPress users. Here is a screenshot showing the structure of the file: Conceptually, the idea is simple: import the data to create actual users for a WordPress-powered site. The trick is to clean the data as much as possible to ensure valid username and password information. Once the data is good, importing is easy using […] Continue reading »

Getting Serious with a New Design

New design in effect at Perishable Press. It’s sort of a hybrid between some of the things I like about the Quintessential theme and some of the best parts of the subsequent Requiem theme. So this new theme is named Serious because it represents a renewed commitment to design, blogging, and everything I love about working on the Web. While I have everything fresh in my mind, here are some of the highlights of the latest incarnation of Perishable Press.. Continue reading »

Dressing up for Halloween..

Happy Halloween! This year, I thought it would be fun to dress up my site with one of its very first themes. The Lithium theme remains one of my favorites, despite some of the scary code used in a few of the template files. Even so, despite its relative simplicity, this theme features some great little details, and even features some stylish quicktags in the comments area. Fun Fact: The Perishable Press “sun” logo was designed specifically for the Lithium […] Continue reading »

Display Random Posts from Specific Tags or Categories in WordPress

When developing the colorful Quintessential Theme (opens in new tab), I initially planned on displaying five random posts from each of my most popular tags and categories in the super-slick sliding-panel sidebar. Because I am running an older version of WordPress, however, this task proved to be quite the educational experience. In newer versions (from 2.5 I think) of WordPress, the query_posts() function enables users to display posts in random order using the orderby=rand parameter. This would have made my […] Continue reading »

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 »

Quintessential Reversion

Due to popular demand, I will be switching the site’s default theme back to the colorful Quintessential theme (opens new tab or window). Many people simply felt that the extreme minimalism of the new Requiem theme (opens new tab or window) was just too “plain” or otherwise difficult to navigate due to the single-column design. So, after giving it a go and receiving some excellent feedback, Perishable Press will be rolling with the Quintessential theme — at least for now.. ;) […] Continue reading »

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