WordPress Plugin: Dashboard Widgets Suite
1 Plugin. 9 Widgets. Awesome Dashboard. Over the years, I’ve assembled a collection of Dashboard widgets that I use frequently on various sites. I find the WordPress Dashboard to be a convenient location for posting notes, viewing debug and error logs, and displaying social media icons, RSS feeds, and other useful information. I find these widgets essential, but I was spending way too much time installing and managing them on all of my sites. Continue reading »
What Chrome Predictive URLs Look Like on the Server
Awhile ago, I was confused by repetitive 404 “Not Found” errors in my server logs. The 404 requests look like someone is typing out various words, a few letters at a time. This post shows what these weird 404s look like from the server’s perspective, and then goes on to explain why they happen and why there is no practical way of preventing them. Continue reading »
Example of a Spoofed Search Engine Bot
While solving the recent search engine spoofing mystery, I came across two excellent examples of spoofed search engine bots. This article uses the examples to explain how to identify any questionable bots hitting your site. Continue reading »
Analyzing Weird 404 Search Engine Requests
Lately I’ve been getting a significant number of really weird 404 requests for one of my sites. At first I ignored them. Then upon closer inspection, I realized that the requests were reporting user agents like Googlebot, Bingbot, and other top search engines. So there was cause for concern. You don’t want legitimate search engines tripping over endless 404 requests that are completely unrelated to your site content. That gets into “negative SEO” territory, and should be investigated and resolved […] Continue reading »
Best Practices for Error Monitoring
Given my propensity to discuss matters involving error log data (e.g., monitoring malicious behavior, setting up error logs, and creating extensive blacklists), I am often asked about the best way to go about monitoring 404 and other types of server errors. While I consider myself to be a novice in this arena (there are far brighter people with much greater experience), I do spend a lot of time digging through log entries and analyzing data. So, when asked recently about […] Continue reading »
Three Unsolved WordPress Mysteries
After several years of using WordPress, I have at least three unanswered questions: What’s up with the WordPress PHP Memory Error? Why do certain phrases trigger 403 “Forbidden” errors when saving or publishing posts? What happened to the Plugin Pages in the WordPress Codex? Let’s have a look at each one of these baffling mysteries.. Continue reading »
Improve Site Performance by Increasing PHP Memory for WordPress
During the recent ASO server debacle, I raced frantically to restore functionality to Perishable Press. Along the way, one of the many tricks that I tried while trying to fix the dreaded “white screen of death” syndrome involved increasing the amount of PHP memory available to WordPress. This fix worked for me, but may not prove effective on every installation of WordPress. If you are unsure as to whether or not you need to increase your PHP memory, consult with […] Continue reading »
WordPress Error Fix(?): Increase PHP Memory for cache.php
This trick isn’t guaranteed to prevent all WordPress-generated PHP memory errors, but it certainly seems to help reduce their overall occurrence. For some reason, after my host upgraded their servers to Apache 1.3.41, I began logging an extremely high number of fatal PHP “memory exhausted” errors resulting from the WordPress cache.php script. Here is an example of the countless errors that are generated: Continue reading »
Advanced PHP Error Handling via PHP
In my previous articles on PHP error handling, I explain the process whereby PHP error handling may be achieved using htaccess. Handling (logging, reporting) PHP errors via htaccess requires the following: Continue reading »
Advanced PHP Error Handling via htaccess
In my previous article on logging PHP errors, How to Enable PHP Error Logging via htaccess, we observed three fundamental aspects of preventing, preserving, and protecting your site’s PHP errors. Continue reading »
How to Enable PHP Error Logging via htaccess
In this brief tutorial, I will show Apache users how to suppress PHP errors from visitors and enable PHP error logging via htaccess. Tracking your site’s PHP errors is an excellent way to manage and troubleshoot unexpected issues related to plugins and themes. Even better, monitoring PHP errors behind the scenes via private log is far better than trying to catch them as they appear at random visits. Thanks to the magical powers of htaccess, there is an easy way […] Continue reading »
Harvesting cPanel Raw Access Logs
For those of you using cPanel as the control panel for our websites, a wealth of information is readily available via cPanel ‘Raw Access Logs’. The cPanel log files perpetually are updated with data. Each logged visit includes information about the user agent, IP address, HTTP response, request URI, request size, and a whole lot more. To help you make use of this potentially valuable information, here is a quick tutorial on accessing and interpreting your cPanel raw access logs. […] Continue reading »
Perishable Press Unresolved Error Log
This post is hereby dedicated to the official logging of all unresolved and/or unexplained errors encountered during development or implementation of various plugins, extensions, themes, scripts, and/or anything else that results in bizarre and mysterious errors, bugs, or other anomalies. Further, we will also post any potential solutions, fixes, workarounds, or explanations for any errors logged in this post. This information is provided for reference purposes only — please share any related information you may have concerning any of the […] Continue reading »
Roll your own Apache Rewrite Log
Roll your own Apache Rewrite log! Rocking your own rewrite log is super-helpful for testing .htaccess rewrite rules, WordPress Permalinks, and much more. All you need is Apache 2.2 (or previous), mod_rewrite enabled (very common on most servers), and access to your server configuration file, http.conf. Continue reading »
Roll Your Own SEO Log
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the business of every serious webmaster. The process of optimizing a website for the search engines involves much more than properly constructed document headers and anchor tags. Websites are like trees: their roots are the growing collection of content presented through the branching universe of the World Wide Web. Or something. The point is that optimizing a website requires nurturing the site itself while also ensuring proper exposure to the requisite elements of the internet. Continue reading »
