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Web Dev + WordPress + Security

The Pros and Cons of Blogging

Among my friends, family, coworkers, and other social acquaintances, there are not many “bloggers.” In fact, there aren’t any. Two or three of my old friends have websites that are updated once or twice per year, but none are actively blogging and sharing their ideas with the online community. Many of my “non-blogging” peeps simply don’t “get it.” To them, the whole idea of consistently updating a website with new material seems like a big waste of time. In fact, […] Continue reading »

How to Edit the Firefox Custom Dictionary

[ Firefox ]

As one who takes full advantage of the custom dictionary in Firefox, I occasionally find myself adding nonexistent or misspelled words to the dictionary by accident. Not wanting to deal with a false negative down the road, I always take the time to stop what I’m doing, locate the custom dictionary, and remove the erroneous term. Finally getting sick of trying to remember the esoteric location in which Firefox stores the personal dictionary, I decided to make a few notes […] Continue reading »

WordPress Tip: Careful with that Autosave, Eugene

[ Screenshot: WordPress Autosave Message (Saved at 2:34:02.) ]

After upgrading WordPress from version 2.0.5 to 2.3.3, I did some experimenting with the “post autosave” feature. The autosave feature uses some crafty ajax to automagically save your post every 2 minutes (120 seconds by default). Below the post-editing field, you will notice a line of text that displays the time of the most recent autosave, similar to the following: Continue reading »

WordPress Tip: Remove Spam from the Comment Subscription Manager

[ Image: Jonny Quest (Inverted) ]

After investigating some unusual 404 errors the other day, I found myself digging through the WordPress Admin Area trying to locate the “Subscribe to Comments” options panel. As it turns out, administrative options for the Subscribe to Comments plugin are split into two different areas. First, the S2C plugin provides configuration options under the WordPress General Settings > “Subscribe to Comments”, which enables users to tweak everything from subscription messages to custom CSS styles. New to me was the other […] Continue reading »

What is My WordPress Feed URL?

[ WordPress RSS Feed ]

For future reference, this article covers each of the many ways to access your WordPress-generated feeds1. Several different URL formats are available for the various types of WordPress feeds — posts, comments, and categories — for both permalink and default URL structures. For each example, replace “http://example.com/” with the URL of your blog. Note: even though your blog’s main feed is accessible through many different URLs, there are clear benefits to using a single, consistent feed URL throughout your site. […] Continue reading »

Fake Slifer Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards on Ebay

[ Front/back scans of counterfeit Slifer Yu-Gi-Oh! card ]

Believe it or not, one of my most popular posts here at Perishable Press is an article I wrote about a counterfeit Slifer Yu-Gi-Oh! card. Since its publication, I have received some very interesting information regarding the apparently extensive market for fake Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Recently, reader Deana wrote to share her experience with an eBay purchase of a “very good counterfeit” Slifer card on eBay. As a savvy Yu-Gi-Oh! collector, Deana has purchased “some really great cards” on eBay. For […] Continue reading »

WordPress Discussion Management: Enable or Disable Comments and Pingbacks via SQL

Continuing my quest to stop comment spam without using plugins, I have decided to disable comments on “old” posts. In my experience, over 90% of comment, trackback and pingback spam occurs on posts that have been online for over a month or so, just long enough to be indexed by the search engines and picked up by spammers. Especially for older posts that have managed to acquire a little page rank, the frequency of spam attempts is far greater than […] Continue reading »

Quickly Disable or Enable All WordPress Plugins via the Database

[ The Flash ]

Recently, while dealing with the dreaded white screen of death, I found myself unable to login to the WordPress Admin area to manually disable all of the plugins used here at Perishable Press. In the past, I have dealt with this situation by simply deleting all plugin files from the server, however this time, time was of the essence — I had only a few minutes with which to troubleshoot, diagnose, and ultimately resolve the deadly white-screen syndrome. Fortunately, after […] Continue reading »

WordPress Plugins: Transfer Autometa Data to All in One SEO

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 »

Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-01-02

[ Photo: Bob Barker Pointing ]

Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series! In this first post, we begin a new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Every Wednesday, I take a little time to investigate my 404 error logs. In addition to spam, crack attacks, and other deliberate mischief, the 404 logs for Perishable Press contain errors due to missing resources, mistyped URLs, and the occasional bizarre or even suspicious behavior of the search-engine robots. Whenever possible, I […] Continue reading »

WordPress Tip: Reduce the Size of the WP-ShortStat Database Table

[ Screenshot: showing the relatively immense size of the WP-ShortStat table ]

In this article, I present a simple method for dramatically decreasing the size of your WordPress database by partially emptying old data from the WP-ShortStat table via the following SQL command: DELETE FROM `wp_ss_stats` ORDER BY `id` ASC LIMIT n That is the point of this entire article, which dips into just about everything one might need to know before employing such strategy. If you are familiar with SQL and understand the purpose and functionality of this command, feel free […] Continue reading »

Are Adblock-Plus Visitors Seeing Your Content?

[ Screenshot: Adblock Plus Ruleset Filter Option Panel ]

As Firefox continues to grow in popularity, it is inevitable that more and more users will install plugins such as Adblock and Adblock Plus. As we know, such extensions work by filtering site contents through a list of predefined wildcard directives and other rules. Users may also customize the block-list by right-clicking on unwanted images or even subscribing to an automated filterset updater. Apparently, a significant number of Firefox users employ these extensions to help control the relentless flood of […] Continue reading »

Optimize WordPress: Pure Code Alternatives for 7 Unnecessary Plugins

[ Photo: Macro shot of a Yttrium claw ]

In this article, my goal is to help you optimize WordPress by replacing a few common plugins with their correspondingly effective code equivalents. As we all know, WordPress can be a very resource-hungry piece of software, especially when running a million extraneous plugins. Often, many common plugins are designed to perform relatively simple tasks, such as redirect a feed, display a random image, query the database, etc. For those of us comfortable with editing PHP and htaccess code, there is […] Continue reading »

Focus on the Details: Optimizing Images for Humans and Machines

[ Inverted close-up of an optimized flower ]

In this article, I discuss how to get the most out of your site’s images by optimizing them for both people and search engines.. For many sites, images play an important role in the communication process. If used correctly, images have the power to make your articles come alive with clarity and vibrancy. Some visitors may merely notice the image and continue reading, while others will want to know more about your images and dig deeper. While checking out your […] Continue reading »

Easily Adaptable WordPress Loop Templates

In this article, I present several heavily commented examples of WordPress loops. I have found that many readers appreciate these types of loop examples, as it helps them to understand how the loop works while enabling them to easily copy, paste, and adapt the code for their own purposes. In our first example, we examine a basic WordPress loop. When implemented, this loop will display “x” number of posts, where “x” represents the number specified via the WordPress Admin reading […] Continue reading »

WordPress Lessons Learned, Part 1: Permalink Structure

While planning my current site renovation project, I considered changing the format of my permalinks. Reasons for modifying the permalink structure of a site include: 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 »
Banhammer: Protect your WordPress site against threats.
Thoughts
I live right next door to the absolute loudest car in town. And the owner loves to drive it.
8G Firewall now out of beta testing, ready for use on production sites.
It's all about that ad revenue baby.
Note to self: encrypting 500 GB of data on my iMac takes around 8 hours.
Getting back into things after a bit of a break. Currently 7° F outside. Chillz.
2024 is going to make 2020 look like a vacation. Prepare accordingly.
First snow of the year :)
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