Custom Widget Names with Dashboard Widgets Suite
Quick tutorial for my Dashboard Widgets Suite plugin. This post explains how to customize the DWS widget names on the Dashboard. Normally each DWS widget displays the widget name along with “Widgets Suite” and a little gear icon that links to the plugin settings. Several users have asked if there is a way to change the text, specifically how to remove the extra text and gear icon. So this article explains how to do it as of Dashboard Widgets Suite […] Continue reading »
.htaccess Redirect Examples
Finally put together a giant list of .htaccess redirect examples. It’s meant as a quick copy-&-paste resource for those who may be looking for an assortment of redirect techniques. Here you will find redirects via mod_alias and mod_rewrite. Examples include redirecting to and from any directory, subdirectory, resource, URL, and much more. Most of these examples are taken from my previous article, Stupid htaccess Tricks; other examples are taken from previous .htaccess tutorials here at Perishable Press. Enjoy! :) Continue reading »
How to Modify HTTP Headers in the WordPress Admin Area
WordPress provides the wp_headers filter hook and send_headers action hook to add and modify HTTP requests. For front-end pages, these are ideal hooks that should be used whenever possible. Unfortunately however neither hook works on all pages in the WordPress Admin Area. After some experimentation, I found an easy solution to modify HTTP headers on any/all pages in the Admin Area. Continue reading »
Vanilla JavaScript Smooth Scroll
While working on the site’s 24th redesign, my goal was to simplify the UI as much as possible. As much as I enjoy lots of cool effects, I wanted the new design to be as minimalist as possible. So that meant dropping a LOT of little bells and whistles that were included in the previous design. One feature that didn’t make the cut was smooth scrolling to internal anchor targets. Like when you click a link that takes you #somewhere […] 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 »
WordPress Error Fix: “Call to undefined function get_header()”
I’m seeing a big increase in bot attacks targeting theme files directly. First they get the URL to your theme directory. There are numerous ways for a bot to get this information. For example most themes include assets like CSS and JavaScript files, and the link includes the full URL. So then once they have the theme URL, bad bots will make direct requests for well-known theme template files, like index.php and header.php. Requesting template files directly may reveal possible […] Continue reading »
Difference between mod_alias and mod_rewrite
Most of the redirect techniques provided in my stupid .htaccess tricks article all use Apache’s alias module, mod_alias. You can also use mod_rewrite to redirect URLs. The main difference is that, with mod_alias, the server is responding to the client request with a redirect, so the client immediately is sent to the new location. Conversely, with mod_rewrite, the server simply returns the new content, so the client is not actually redirected anywhere. This makes mod_rewrite more advantageous because it happens […] Continue reading »
CLI Forward-Reverse Lookup
In previous posts, I’ve explained how to verify identity of search engines and other bots, by looking up the host name and then doing a reverse lookup to cross-check the IP address. This is often referred to as a forward-reverse lookup, or something to that effect. The point is, there are plenty of free online tools available for performing forward-reverse IP/host lookups. And online tools are great, but it’s also possible to do forward/reverse lookups directly via the command line, […] Continue reading »
Activate WordPress Plugins via the Database
Recently a reader named Chris asked, “how can we turn ON a plugin from the database?” He mentioned reading my previous article, Quickly Disable or Enable All WordPress Plugins via the Database, but for circumstantial slash technical reasons needed to do the opposite and enable a plugin directly via the WordPress database. I thought it was an interesting question that might actually be useful to discuss here at Perishable Press. Continue reading »
X Theme Leftover Code Snippets
While working on the site’s 24th redesign, I ended up with about 10 code snippets that were awesome but ultimately not needed. So rather than just delete these tasty functions, I am posting them here for future reference. Who knows, during the next site update I may decide to implement or repurpose some of these techniques. And of course sharing is caring, so feel free to use any of these code snippets in your own projects. Check out the Table […] Continue reading »
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience.
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