A year ago today, I wrote about fighting trackback spam on a self-hosted WordPress site. It involved running a SQL query directly on the database to speed up the clean up process and make it more efficient. Since I was dealing with over 100 spam-linking comments on each post, I could use all the help in that regard I could get. Fortunately, the solution written up there worked … [Read more...]
A timeline of the unconstitutional “Amazon Tax” in Illinois
Today marks one year since Illinois Circuit Court Judge Robert Lopez Cepero ruled that HB 3659, Public Act 96-1544, was unconstitutional. Affiliates within the State of Illinois were cut off by most companies such as Amazon and eBay after the bill was signed into law. As a result, Illinois entered a lose-lose-lose situation by reducing taxable income of its citizens, forcing … [Read more...]
Adding two-factor authentication to your website
Last week, WordPress.com introduced two-step authentication as an optional feature for WordPress.com blogs. It utilizes the Google Authenticator app for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry smartphones. If you don't have a smartphone the secondary password can be sent to you in a text message, your phone being the "something you have". For self-hosted WordPress sites, it was … [Read more...]
Using different fonts in WordPress
The Web has a sordid history with fonts. If you have been around the web world for long enough, you probably recall some of the pains from clients wanting to use particularly weird fonts who then get upset when it doesn't appear correct on a random computer they used. Previously, to show a font in HTML 4, it required having the font installed on the computers visiting your … [Read more...]
Including an image in your WordPress excerpt RSS feed
WordPress RSS feeds have two built-in options: full content or an excerpt. You can custom write the excerpt of each article or let it be automatically created out of the first 200 words or so. Unfortunately, I was finding with the full content feed that blog scrapers would just plug your feed, amongst others, into their site and have your content populate their site. This was … [Read more...]