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Web Dev + WordPress + Security
Tag: design
60 posts

An Epic Design Fail

We’ve all experienced design fails. Sadly, they happen so often as to be unmemorable, not worth mentioning. Design fail examples include things like form controls not working, or confusing user interfaces, or problems with folding phones, or myriad other mobile phone design fails. But every now and then you encounter a design that fails so badly, that you just have to share it. Continue reading »

Plugin Planet 2021 Redesign

Finally! Writing this post is the final step in the 2021 redesign of my WordPress plugins site, Plugin Planet. The site launched seven years ago in 2014. I think I spent a couple of months or so building the original site to the best of my ability. That first design stood the test of time, and honestly it would have been fine for another couple of years or more. But after seven years of changes, modifications, swapping out plugins, adding […] Continue reading »

Building the Perishable Press Bookstore

After six months of on-again, off-again hard work (and plenty of unexpected challenges), I am excited to launch the new Perishable Press Bookstore. The old bookstore was located on a separate domain, but I wanted it to be better integrated with the main site here at Perishable Press. So now there is the site blog at perishablepress.com and the store at books.perishablepress.com. Continue reading »

Redesign #25: Performance Over Perfection

Welcome to the 2020 (25th!) redesign for Perishable Press. Like many of the previous designs, the new design is super minimal and organic. The #1 goal this time around was to find an optimal balance between performance and aesthetics. Or put another way.. Continue reading »

CSS Background Hover Slide Effect

While working on the site’s 24th redesign, I played around with a number of styles to customize the appearance of links. As you can see by hovering over any link, I decided to keep the styles as minimal as possible while still letting the user know that, “hey, this is a link”. This quick post shares one of the link styles I was considering, it’s sort of a “slide-up” background-color effect that happens when the user hovers over the hyperlink. Continue reading »

Metamorphosis

After 9 grueling weeks, I am happy to say that the 2018 Perishable Press redesign is complete. There are still a few small details that I am contemplating, but overall the work is finished and the site is back to full production capacity. From the old Wire theme rolled out in 2013 (five years ago!), to the minimalist, lightweight X Theme, Perishable Press has metamorphosed into a lean, mean, content sharing machine. This is the 24th time Perishable Press has […] Continue reading »

Redesign in progress..

Pardon my dust! I am in the process of switching over to the site’s new design. Please report anything weird, otherwise please pardon my dust as the site settles in with its new theme :) Will post a full report soon! Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: Theme Switcha

Announcing my latest WordPress plugin, Theme Switcha! There are many theme-switch plugins but none of them provide the simplicity, performance, and reliability that I require for my own sites. So I wrote my own plugin using the WP API and kept the code as focused and solid as possible. Only essential theme-switching features have been added, along with a simple yet informative UI. Theme Switcha gives you a consistent, quality theme-switching experience that you can optionally share with your visitors. Continue reading »

Some Q & A

Gonna start posting or deleting all of my old drafts just to clean things up back here in the Admin Area. For example, here is a post that I wanted to flesh out with specific examples and all sorts of references, but it’s just been sitting and waiting for too long, so now I’m just gonna post it as-is. Enjoy or not, here it is.. Continue reading »

xy.css moved to Perishable Press

Recently I’ve been implementing SSL on my domains and have been streamlining and updating some projects along the way. Consolidating properties is a great way to simplify workflow and boost productivity, so I’ve went ahead and moved xyCSS from its own domain, xy.css, to its new home here at Perishable Press. Continue reading »

New Design and Updated Content

I’m getting back into the swing of things around here, now stepping it up with a new design, new tools, and lots of updated (and new) content, demos, scripts, and more. Here is a quick rundown of the new design and updated projects.. Continue reading »

New Demos and Tools Pages

Working on organizing the site, I’ve put together two new pages that round-up my Demos and Tools. The demos are organized into sections, Ajax, CSS, PHP, and so on. Most of the tools are for encoding and decoding, but will eventually include stuff for CSS, .htaccess, JavaScript, et al. Both of these new pages are readily accessible from the top menu bar (see left screenshot). It’s better than fun! Continue reading »

WP-Mix – A fresh mix of code snippets and tutorials

Wrapping up 2012, I finally launched xyCSS, which is all about responsive, grid-based design. To showcase xy.css, I used it to design WP-Mix.com, which also serves to house a growing collection of choice code snippets. Currently WP-Mix features over 100 snippets, tutorials, and other useful bits to help with WordPress development and web design in general. The topics are similar to those at Perishable Press (e.g., WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, etc.), but the posts are less-involved and aimed at intermediate […] Continue reading »

xy.css – Responsive Grid Design

For the past year or so, I’ve been heavy into responsive, grid-based design. In December, I “soft-launched” my new site, xyCSS with a simple tweet: Bringing it all together: https://perishablepress.com/xycss/ As implied (and explained), xy.css is a lightweight CSS template for creating semantic HTML5 designs on a responsive liquid matrix. Continue reading »

3D Text with CSS3 text-shadow

Here’s a fun way to make text look 3D using CSS3. Using CSS whenever possible instead of images has several key advantages, including faster page-loads and better SEO I use the CSS text-shadow technique in a previous theme, and a few people had asked about it, so here it is: everything you need to create your own stunning 3D-text with CSS3.. Continue reading »

10 Collections of Minimalist Web Design

I always enjoy looking at good minimalist web design. Here are my top favorite collections of articles featuring minimalist design, comprising nearly 500 examples for your inspiration and amusement ;) 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 »
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Thoughts
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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