Another 5 Things Your WordPress Site Doesn’t Need

This is the third segment in a series on removing stuff from WordPress. I recommend you check out Part 1 and Part 2.

The last couple of articles on this subject garnered plenty of interesting responses and suggestions from our readers, which I thought warranted a third post in the series.

So here we go with yet another 5 things that you can remove from WordPress, all in the name of making your site faster, simpler and more secure.

1. Your WordPress version number

This is a handy WordPress security tip, procured from our very own Mason James. _{(Thanks for doing my work for me)}

Having your WordPress version number output by the wp_generator() function could have a negative impact on your site’s security.

Making your WordPress version number available (as it is by default) can make it easier for hackers to use a known weakness in that version. The easiest way to get rid of this is to add the following to your theme’s function.php:

remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);

2. Zip files from theme and plugin uploads

If you upload themes and plugins to your WordPress installation manually, you’ll be left with a bunch of .zip files sitting around on your server. These are just dead weight and there’s no need to keep them. Get on in there and do a bit of housekeeping.

3. The ‘Tools’ menu

In the left sidebar of your dashboard. You ever used it before? Me neither.

Unless you have some specific reason for keeping it around, the Tools menu is one more piece of dashboard clutter you can safely get rid of.

4. The ‘Links’ menu

Another less-than-useful dashboard menu. Granted, the links in question point to some very important information resources.

But anyone with a more than a passing familiarity with WordPress knows all these sites already. Unless you’re a total WP newbie who’s still learning to walk, you’re probably never going to use the Links menu.

To remove both the Tools and Links menus from your WordPress dashboard, open the functions.php file in your Theme editor and paste the following code:

<?php
	add_action( 'admin_menu', 'my_remove_menu_pages' );

	function my_remove_menu_pages() {
		remove_menu_page('link-manager.php');
		remove_menu_page('tools.php');
	}
?>

5. Any widgets that you’re not going to to use

For your own personal WordPress site, useless widgets are just a waste of space. For a client’s site, they’re a potential headache waiting to happen (if your client decides to do a little widget experimentation without really knowing what they’re doing).

Take a long, hard look at that group of widgets, and bring down the axe on anything that’s not relevant or useful to the website.

Removing available widgets from the dashboard entirely is a fairly advanced procedure – check out this page in the WordPress Codex for further info.

Got anything to add to the list?

If you can suggest anything else than can and should be removed from WordPress, that we didn’t cover in Part 1 or Part 2, please let us know in the comment sections below.

_{Image credits: Goodbye and Businessman Throwing Trash from Bigstockphoto.}

Tags:

• WordPress Security
• menus
• widgets