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Backwards-Compatible Spam and Delete Buttons for WordPress

Recently, Joost de Valk shared an excellent technique for adding spam and delete buttons to comments on your WordPress-powered blog. The idea is to save administration time by providing links to either “spam” or “delete” individual comments without having to navigate through the WordPress Admin Area. Joost provides the following plug-n-play solution: Continue reading »

How to Write Valid URL Query String Parameters

When building web pages, it is often necessary to add links that require parameterized query strings. For example, when adding links to the various validation services, you may find yourself linking to an accessibility checker, such as the freely available Cynthia service: Continue reading »

Fully Valid, SEO-Friendly Social Media Links for WordPress

With the explosion of social media, networking, and bookmarking services, there are a zillion ways to add “Share This Post” functionality to your WordPress-powered sites. In addition to the myriad services and plugins, we can also add these links directly, using nothing more than a little markup and a few choice PHP snippets. Such individual links provide full control over the selection, layout, and styling of each link without requiring the installation of yet another WordPress plugin. This article shares […] Continue reading »

Fruit Loop: Separate any Number of Odd and Even Posts from any Category in WordPress

Recently, I discussed how to implement a horizontally sequenced display order for WordPress posts in two columns. In that tutorial, I explain how to separate odd and even posts using a dual-loop configuration and PHP’s modulus operator. Such technique serves well a variety of configurational scenarios, but is limited to the display of the default (admin-specified) number of posts from all categories. In this tutorial, we adapt this odd-and-even loop configuration to accommodate a much greater degree of customization. Specifically, […] Continue reading »

Multiple Loops and Multiple Columns with WordPress, (X)HTML and CSS

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 »

A Social Networking Nightmare

Picture it. You have just prepared some recent snapshots of your buddies from a gathering over the weekend. Special care was taken to choose the images, and resize the images appropriately. As you sign in to your favorite social networking site to upload these images, you realize your credentials are invalid. You type in permutations of your user-name and password, check the “Caps” Key, but find that you are still not allowed access to your account. Your account could be […] Continue reading »

Secrets of the Conditional Tag Revealed: How to Gain More Control Over Your WP Templates

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 »

Self-Publishing Survival Tips: On-Demand Book Printing at Lulu.com

For on-demand printing of books, calendars, and other desktop-published items, lulu.com is a popular choice. The on-demand service provides customers with online administration interface that provides automated tools for uploading, publishing, and managing their projects. Once published, books may be printed, purchased, downloaded, and/or distributed. Of course, the entire process of using lulu.com to publish and print projects is fairly complex, with many details contingent on your specific needs. As a recent customer of lulu.com, I thought I would share […] Continue reading »

Horizontally Sequenced Display Order for WordPress Posts in Two Columns

[ Diagram: Default WordPress Post Display Order ]

Most WordPress-powered blogs display posts in sequential order within a single column. Like this, for example: Continue reading »

Choosing the Best Title Separators

While writing my previous article on creating the perfect WordPress title tags, I deliberately avoided discussing the use of separators in titles. I feel that the topic is worthy of its own article, enabling a more thorough exploration of the details. Title separators are the symbols, punctuation, and other characters used to distinguish between various parts of the page title. For example, a title may include the blog name, post title and blog description, with each element separated by a […] Continue reading »

WordPress Error Fix: Unable to Parse URL

For those of you running an older version of WordPress that is generating errors that look like any of these fabricated examples: Continue reading »

85 Firefox Shortcuts for Mac and PC

As my browser of choice, Firefox provides all the functionality I need for web design, application development, everyday surfing, and much more. With a handful of choice extensions installed, Firefox is a lean, mean “get-it-done” machine. Plus, I am always looking for new ways to boost productivity and increase efficiency. Of course, an excellent way to do this involves learning and using as many mouse and keyboard shortcuts as possible. Over the past few years, I have collected oodles of […] Continue reading »

How to Generate Perfect WordPress Title Tags without a Plugin

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 »

WordPress Tip: Link Author Comments to the Home Page

After almost three years of blogging here at Perishable Press, I had an epiphany about my author comment links. Way back when, after installing WordPress in a subdirectory called /press/, without really thinking too much about it, I decided to set the URL for the Admin User’s “Website” as this: https://perishablepress.com/press/ After all, it seemed to make sense at the time, plus it really didn’t seem to matter.. I mean think about it. Unless I instruct my WordPress theme to […] Continue reading »

WordPress Tip: Disable Comments in Old Posts via PHP

Just a quick WordPress snippet for future reference. I recently explained how to disable comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks via SQL. Here’s a good way to do it via PHP: <?php function close_comments( $posts ) { if ( !is_single() ) { return $posts; } if ( time() – strtotime( $posts[0]->post_date_gmt ) > ( 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 ) ) { $posts[0]->comment_status = 'closed'; $posts[0]->ping_status = 'closed'; } return $posts; } add_filter( 'the_posts', 'close_comments' ); ?> You can run […] Continue reading »

Working with Multiple Themes Outside of the WordPress Installation Directory

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 »

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