Do you sometimes find yourself with a file that you cannot open because you do not have the correct program installed? Or perhaps you only encounter them on rare occasions and find that this is not a sufficient enough reason to purchase the necessary software. Instead of requesting another format, why not use the variety of free software available to open the file for you!

Check out OpenWith.org for free software that will allow you to open a multitude of file extensions. Long gone are the days of not having the correct program for the job!

Wow! This one made me laugh! No offense to Microsoft; I still use Office 2003 Professional.

Didn’t the WordPress team just recently release v2.8.2 to fix an XSS vulnerability? Well, it seems as though a few other fixes were also made and here we have WordPress 2.8.3.

Update/upgrade your WordPress installations now because this is a security release that fixes a bunch of issues from v2.8.1.

Read more here: WordPress 2.8.3 Security Release

This is not one of my regular technical posts. I do have a sense of humour and enjoy a good laugh, especially when everything can be achieved through clean comedy. Here is a video I came across while on YouTube. Yes, it is totally random, but you will have to admit that it is funny. Enjoy!

By default, WordPress installations announce their currently installed version in the header. You will find it within a meta tag of the page’s HTML.

If you do not keep on top of WordPress updates, you can imagine that this presents a security risk. Those wishing to exploit vulnerabilities like the recent XSS vulnerability in WordPress 2.8.1 can target blogs just by looking at the header meta information. The situation gets worse if you are still using an even older version of WordPress.

Getting WordPress to stop advertising this version information requires that you add the following to your theme’s functions.php file. Remember how we removed other header elements? This WordPress hack is similar. Note that you need to do this every time you change your theme.

add_filter( 'the_generator', create_function('$a', "return null;") );

Upon logging in to one of my WordPress blogs this morning, I saw the notification to upgrade to WordPress 2.8.2.  Wasn’t WordPress 2.8.1 released just a few weeks ago? Well, I’m thankful that the WordPress developers are keeping on top of security.

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability that was found to exploit comment author URLs through the admin panel. Wow! That’s scary!

Read more about it here: WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.8.2

I found that using the built-in automatic upgrade does not always work properly and may get stuck at the “unpacking” stage. While you can try the manual upgrade, it can be a very long process. Automatic upgrading has progressed very far and can be completed within seconds. Just ensure that before you update and subsequently deactivate all of your plugins before executing the upgrade in either case. They can be re-activated after the upgrade process is complete.

I was performing a bit of optimization on one of my WordPress blogs and wanted to clean up the header. The default installation of WordPress adds quite a bit up there and this bloat can be compounded by a theme’s own customizations. After quite a bit of searching around Google, I came up with a clean solution. Here is what I did to help de-clutter my theme’s header.

In addition to custom Javascript and CSS calls that may clutter your theme’s header.php file, you may find some other elements whose features you will never use or could do without. However, these elements usually only appear when viewing your pages through your browser, because activated plugins will automatically insert them via PHP. Take, for example, WP-PageNavi. This is a great plugin for placing numbered page links in your WordPress blog, but it inserts a call to its own stylesheet. Being the optimization junkie that I am, it would be better for me to just combine WP-PageNavi’s stylesheet with my theme’s stylesheet so a single CSS file loads all of the styles. The problem is getting rid of WP-PageNavi’s call to its own stylesheet without deactivating the plugin altogether.

Many of these header insertions are being called by the wp_head() hook. Look in your theme’s header.php file and you will see it there. If you think that simply removing the hook will eliminate these extra insertions, you are correct, but it doesn’t come without consequences. Doing so may completely cripple the functionality of your blog because there are other necessary insertions that are required to make your theme work properly. You can, however, disable individual insertions without removing the wp_head() hook, which gives you more control.

In order to achieve removal of plugins hooking into wp_head() you will need to look at that plugin’s main PHP file. Look for functions that look like this:

add_action('wp_head', 'plugin_function_here');

Adding the following line to your theme’s functions.php file and saving it will disable that insertion via wp_head():

remove_action('wp_head', 'plugin_function_here');

Reload a page in your web browser and view the source to see the changes. Quite self-explanatory and simple, isn’t it? Just be careful of what you remove.

There are unique cases where forcing a remove_action from wp_head() does not work. In the case of WP-PageNavi, there is no explicit action being added to wp_head(), but it will still load its own stylesheet. If you look at wp-pagenavi.php you will notice the ‘Enqueue PageNavi Stylesheets’ function that inserts the stylesheet via a wp_print_styles action:

add_action('wp_print_styles', 'pagenavi_stylesheets');

To stop WP-PageNavi’s stylesheet from being called in the header, all you need to do is add the following to your theme’s functions.php file:

remove_action('wp_print_styles', 'pagenavi_stylesheets');

By now you should be noticing a trend. Find the function, then remove the function. Here are some other elements that you can remove that are in direct reference to wp_head(). Note that you should only disable these features if you do not use them.

// Really Simple Discovery
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
// Windows Live Writer
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');

You can take things a bit further as I have done. I noticed that my theme calls for jQuery Javascript through wp_head() plus a few other Javascript files outside of wp_head(). Again, I was looking at a way of possibly combining and compressing my theme’s Javascript, but how would I disable jQuery loading through wp_head()? I could not find a function reference that would allow me to remove it and trying remove_action('wp_head', 'jquery'); didn’t work. I did find that wp_deregister_script('jquery'); could work perfectly. However, if placed in your theme’s functions.php file, the WordPress Dashboard admin area would become seriously crippled! No longer would the fancy drop-down menus work and various other features stopped working properly all of a sudden. Obviously, the admin area requires jQuery (duh!), so I had to remove the entry from my theme’s functions.php file. Being inquisitive as I am, I placed wp_deregister_script('jquery'); in my theme’s header.php file instead and, to my surprise, doing this disabled jQuery from loading in the theme yet allowed the admin area to retain full functionality.

Be aware that my theme still utilizes jQuery. It is just that I have chosen to pack all of my Javascript together and call for it through a static URL within script tags.

I hope this post is helpful to persons who are interested in gaining more control over their theme’s header and reducing all of the clutter. Please be careful of what you edit and, of course, have fun with WordPress!

WordPress is my favourite blogging platform and CMS as you can guess from the types of posts you may have come across here. It’s amazing flexibility is due to the tremendous plugin contributions that WordPress fans have written. While adding plugins can definitely add a variety of functionality to your blog, however, this does not come without a cost. Here, I will show you one small technique you can employ to improve your WordPress website performance, specifically as it concerns CSS files.

Some WordPress plugins will make calls to their own external CSS stylesheets. These stylesheets are usually called for within the WordPress header. Now, as proper coding has probably taught you, external stylesheets are a good thing and you should avoid inline HTML styling. However, if you have ever run Firebug and YSlow for Firebug (both are Mozilla Firefox extensions) and are obsessed with website performance you will notice that reducing the number of HTTP requests is also a good thing. This is actually logical: if you reduce the number of files a browser has to download in order to view your website then you can increase page loading speed. Combine this with server-side compression and your web pages will feel like they are on steroids! You may be asking yourself, “How does this apply to plugins and does reducing the number of HTTP requests involve losing site functionality?” The answer, “[Wow! That was a long question!] No, you do not lose site functionality and you can see how below.”

The technique involved here is similar to the that of PHP Speedy (for which a WordPress plugin is also available), but with a bit of manual labour. Essentially, it involves combining the contents of your theme’s CSS stylesheet and your plugin’s CSS stylesheet into a single file. Now, you should be aware that doing this will increase the total size of your single CSS file, which may or may not be better served as separate file. Therefore, I would recommend that you only add   Furthermore, only try this technique with plugins that you do not forsee removing in the near future.

1. Open your plugin’s CSS stylesheet and your theme’s CSS stylesheet in your favourite text editor.
2. Copy and paste the contents of your plugin’s CSS file to your theme’s CSS file, preferably pasting at the bottom. If you are a stickler for organization you may want to mark the added CSS with some comments.
3. Save the updated CSS file and reupload it to your theme’s directory.
4. Open your plugin’s main PHP file in your favourite text editor.
5. Locate the line that calls for the plugin’s external CSS file and comment it out.
6. Save the updated PHP file and reupload it to your plugin’s directory.

The result is a theme that loads its own CSS and the CSS required for the plugin all from a single file. The plugin no longer calls for its own external CSS file, which eliminates another stylesheet reference in the header. That was pretty easy, wasn’t it? The concept is far from complicated. The only part that you may have to be careful with is the line you deactivate in the plugin’s PHP file. If your plugin breaks after doing this, it is likely that you did something incorrectly. Don’t sweat! Just go back into the plugin and activate the deactivated lines.

Test your website loading time to see whether a major difference exists between calls to combined or separate external CSS stylesheets.

NOTES:

• You should realize that plugin updates will reset all of the work you did above, so you will have to manually make the necessary changes every time an update overwrites the plugin’s PHP file.
• In the event that you are uncomfortable meddling with code and would rather have a plugin do it, then check out PHP Speedy for WordPress. PHP Speedy essentially does the same thing and even allows you to combine JS files.
• An interesting article on website optimization that you may find interesting is over at Sitepoint.com.

Technically speaking, spring is still one day away, but right now, it sure does feel like it’s here! The snow has finally melted, the skies are bright blue and clear, and the sun is shining brilliantly. It is only a matter of time before the greenery starts returning to the flora. Yes, all these nice things to enjoy, but I can’t enjoy them fully because I am too busy.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted here in a while. There is a good reason which you have probably heard before. I am swamped with more than my fair share of university work so most of my free time is spent trying to catch up on a few hours of sleep before either tiring away at my own assignments or my part-time job on campus. Added to that, this is my 4th and final year at university so the pressure is on to make a better-than-usual impression in my final marks before graduation day. I have still not made an appointment to take my graduation photos because, quite frankly, my current state won’t be very photogenic. I have lost so many hours of sleep that I feel like a zombie and, my hair is overdue for a cutting. I really do not want to remember the stress of this time 10-15 years from now when I take out the ol’ photo album.

You may have noticed that I changed the site template. I like the minimalistic approach to this theme which also happens to put more focus on blog content. My next move may be to reorganize those pages or remove some altogether. Have to get back to work now… Will get up to date with my posts later.

As you may already know, I am a speed and performance junkie. When it comes to website management, nothing makes me feel better than a website that loads fast! If this can be done with dynamic content then it is something to admire.

One feature that I have implemented on the HostMonster-hosted website that I manage is GZIP compression. For a detailed description on GZIP you can read this very interesting article on BetterExplained.com. In short, however, what GZIPing does is that it compresses downloaded files which essentially saves a bit on server bandwidth and slightly speeds up client-side viewing. Although you can use some PHP to call for compression on the fly for specific files it is much easier to simply activate compression from the web server. Here, I will show you how you can activate it for a website hosted with HostMonster. This should also work if you are on another shared hosting provider that runs under Linux and Apache. You need access to your php.ini file and .htaccess file.

1. Check to make sure that your hosting environment can utilize GZIP. If you host your website with HostMonster this feature is supported. On other web hosts you will need to execute phpinfo(), then ensure that ‘gzip‘ is listed under _ENV["HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING"] and HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING to verify.
2. Once you have verified that the feature is supported go ahead and create a single php.ini file that can be applied to all subdirectories within your /htdocs or /public_html directory. On HostMonster-hosted, just go to the ‘Software/Services’ section of your cPanel and click on ‘PHP Config’. Select ‘PHP5 (single php.ini)’ and save the change. Then, click on “Install PHP.ini master file”. Rename the “php.ini.default” file to php.ini in your public web files directory. If you had one there before, delete it before renaming the new php.ini file.
3. Open the php.ini file in a simple text editor and navigate to the section that deals with . Set the value equal to ob_gzhandler and ensure that any values for zlib are disabled or commented out. Afterward, save and update the php.ini file on the server.
   
4. Open the .htaccess file that is located in your public web files directory (usually the same location as you php.ini file). Add the following statements to invoke the use of the relevant Apache module for compressing your files listed and save.
   
5. Now try accessing your website through your browser. After about a minute or two, run the GIDZipTest for your website. If your site is reported to be serving compressed pages then you are finished!

I have been able to achieve compression as high as 70% as reported by the GIDZipTest page. I hope it works for you and your site sees a bit more improvement when it comes to loading time. There are still a few other things that can be done in terms of making things faster, but those will come later. Happy tweaking!

WARNING: Do not attempt to enable GZIP using these steps while you have ZLIB enabled. Use one or the other. Again, HostMonster supports ZLIB but, just like GZIP, it is not enabled by default. Furthermore, attempting to enable server-side compression while you have PHP or plugins already doing the compression can lead to a garbled output.