Easy throwaway email addresses
Easily create unique email addresses to give to companies, so you can tell who leaked your address to spammers and shut them down.
Blog
Where are you using this plugin?
How to tell where a plugin is used so you know whether you can deactivate it.
Making Contact Form 7 more usable
If you use Contact Form 7, there’s a thing you might do to avoid user misunderstandings from the default form behavior.
Controlling how links to your pages appear elsewhere
Before you post, use these settings to control you search engines and social media describe your webpage.
iThemes Security incompatibility with Matomo
How to resolve 403 Forbidden error or 403 Not Allowed error when using Matomo on a WordPress site that also has the iThemese Security plugin.
Plugin review: WP Rollback
If a plugin update causes a problem, how do you find out which plugin and how do you rewind to a previous version?
Plugin comparison: Watermarks
I compare plugins for adding watermarks to protect images from unauthorized reuse (aka theft).
Plugin review: hCaptcha for Forms and More
You probably don’t need this plugin unless you’re using Contact Form 7, but if you do need it, this is the plugin you need.
Using Buffalo LinkStation or TeraStation NAS as a music source for Sonos
Untypically, this post isn’t about WordPress, but it’s a technical topic I couldn’t find answers to online, so I hope others with the same problem… Read More »Using Buffalo LinkStation or TeraStation NAS as a music source for Sonos
Theme Review: Neve
My current favorite, the Neve theme has a clean look, great typography control, and enough options to make it easy to customize without being overwhelming.
Plugin review: CC Child Pages
I often want a page containing an automatically generated grid of subsidiary pages, without having to work hard to make it happen.
A new plugin by me
I was working on a website — needed a way to edit the “excerpt” of a page (as opposed to a post), but the theme I was using didn’t let me! So I wrote a very simple plugin to wrassle it into submission. It is now available on this site, free to anyone.
Read More »A new plugin by me
Plugin review: The Paste
You can paste images directly into a post or page while editing — but the resulting filename in your media library is completely random. Here’s… Read More »Plugin review: The Paste
Speed up your website with WebP
Make your images load faster using WebP format on your WordPress website. If images are faster, the page is faster. And a faster site gives… Read More »Speed up your website with WebP
Reusable Blocks and Patterns
Two of the features that make the WordPress block editor a thing of niceness. They save time and prevent inconsistent formatting in the content of your pages and posts. But how and where are they best used?
Read More »Reusable Blocks and PatternsTork on Torque!
I recently participated in a discussion of author websites — watch the recording here!
Sifting Through a Ton of Spam Comments
If you’ve installed a spam control plugin such as Antispam Bee, you shouldn’t be getting a lot of new spam comments on your posts. But what about the thousands of comments you received before activating spam blocking? Some tiny fraction of them may be legit comments from actual people, that you’d like to keep.
Read More »Sifting Through a Ton of Spam Comments
Plugin review: Jetpack
The popular Jetpack plugin adds a whole lot of functions in one giant package. It’s often installed automatically with WordPress. I don’t care for it,… Read More »Plugin review: Jetpack
Post-Read Pages
For authors who have their own websites, this is a way to leverage the site to engage readers, to encourage additional sales and reviews. When… Read More »Post-Read Pages
Affiliate Income on Your Own Book Sales
Some online booksellers, including the One Who Shall Not Be Named, offer an affiliate program. This is an incentive for you to direct customers to… Read More »Affiliate Income on Your Own Book Sales
How to make non-skeevy QR codes
Recent statistics show that use of QR codes — those dotty squares that point your smartphone to a web page — are on the rise.… Read More »How to make non-skeevy QR codes
Change of Plan
My publisher and I have mutually decided their production process isn’t fast enough to accommodate the frequent updates a book such as One Hour Author… Read More »Change of Plan
How to Migrate a WordPress Website
You’re switching website hosting to a different provider (here are my recommended providers). You want minimum downtime, and to avoid breaking anything you might not… Read More »How to Migrate a WordPress Website
Plugin Review: WPvivid Backup Plugin
I’ve previously reviewed and recommended the UpdraftPlus Backup plugin. The WPvivid Backup and Migration Plugin does basically the same task, roughly as well, and has… Read More »Plugin Review: WPvivid Backup Plugin
New Hosting Provider Recommendation
A trusted associate recently recommended a new website hosting company to me, so I checked them out. They look good, and we’re planning to transfer… Read More »New Hosting Provider Recommendation
E-book download garbage screen
This is about an occasional problem I’ve seen with e-book downloads. When you click the download link (as opposed to using the context menu to explicitly save the file), it opens in the browser, but the contents are garbage characters.
Read More »E-book download garbage screen
Plugin Review: WP Mail SMTP
This plugin helps email sent by your website get past spam filters.
Using the Accordion Control
The Accordion control lets you create “click to expand” outline entries. I share the custom CSS I came up with to make this control more… Read More »Using the Accordion Control
WordPress Block Editor: Threat or Menace?
Since the release of WordPress 5.0, many longtime WordPress users have complained bitterly about the replacement of the “Classic” page editor with the “Block Editor”… Read More »WordPress Block Editor: Threat or Menace?
Website hosting on sale
if you’ve been thinking of launching a new website (or if your current hosting service could be better and cheaper), this might be a good… Read More »Website hosting on sale
How to Manage Your Passwords
For your security, it’s best to use a different password on every account. But keeping track of them all is a pain.
Quick Install of My “Essential” Plugins
To save time, I’ve created a list of the plugins I install when creating an author website, which you can install in a single step… Read More »Quick Install of My “Essential” Plugins
Graphene Theme How-to Compendium
I make a fair bit of use of the Graphene theme, which has two features I frequently want: a non-scrolling menu and sidebar widget areas.… Read More »Graphene Theme How-to Compendium
Make menu items into buttons
Highlight selected menu items in your WordPress site by changing them into buttons.
SVG File in a Web Page
The problem with raster graphics (such as your typical JPG, GIF, or PNG file) is that they don’t scale up very well. They get fuzzy… Read More »SVG File in a Web Page
Plugin review: Comment Link Remove
This plugin frustrates spammers by removing the field in which they post their spammy links.
New plugin announcement: Hide featured image on all single page/post
I made a new thing — a plugin to turn off featured image display in all single WordPress pages and posts, for use with themes… Read More »New plugin announcement: Hide featured image on all single page/post
Plugin review: Lightbox for Gallery & Image Block
This provides an essential function that really should be baked into WordPress. When you click to enlarge an image, a modern, professional site doesn’t navigate… Read More »Plugin review: Lightbox for Gallery & Image Block
Thoughts on Featured Images in WordPress
Where should themes display featured images, how can you gain some control over that, and how does that tie in to what images show up… Read More »Thoughts on Featured Images in WordPress
Mailchimp vs. Mailerlite
Two popular free subscriber list services go head to head. Main difference is whether your postal address has to be in your emails.
Plugin Review: Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & Other Email
As described elsewhere on this site, you can use the RSS feature of WordPress, in conjunction with automatic newsletters in email service providers such as… Read More »Plugin Review: Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & Other Email
Remove your mailing address from MailChimp newsletters
Bottom line: you can’t; use mailerlite instead. By law, a company sending email for you has to know your mailing address. The law doesn’t require… Read More »Remove your mailing address from MailChimp newsletters
Plugin review: Perfect Images
When you upload an image to your WordPress media library, WordPress automatically creates copies of the image at different scalings. The basic WordPress engine generates… Read More »Plugin review: Perfect Images
Plugin review: Broken Link Checker
The free Broken Link Checker plugin from WPMU DEV is something you’ll pretty much want on every site. Broken links can occur at any time… Read More »Plugin review: Broken Link Checker
Hide the author name on pages and posts
If all the content on your website has a single author, it may be superfluous to display author name on every post, especially if your… Read More »Hide the author name on pages and posts
Responsive Widgets to Top in Graphene Theme
Graphene is one of my favorite themes — I’ve used it on several websites. It has a nice look out of the box, a reasonable… Read More »Responsive Widgets to Top in Graphene Theme
Plugin review: All-in-One WP Migration
A common issue during web development is that you have the site at one URL, and you want to move the whole thing to a… Read More »Plugin review: All-in-One WP Migration
Plugin review: Redirection
Redirection by John Godley. I used to have one website for my writing projects — tylertork.com. Then I split it out into two — the… Read More »Plugin review: Redirection
Plugin review: Auto Upload Images
EDIT: This plugin has fallen out of maintenance, and I can no longer recommend its use. I haven’t found a substitute as yet. If you… Read More »Plugin review: Auto Upload Images
Configure MailChimp to email blog updates
This article assumes you already have a MailChimp account and a subscriber list there (even if there is nobody in it yet). I’ll show how… Read More »Configure MailChimp to email blog updates