13. Erase thousands of unfiltered spam comments in seconds

Often, spam comments survive the spam filters and reach your ‘awaiting moderation’ list. Deleting it manually could be time-consuming. Follow the procedure to instantly delete thousands of such spam comments.
Log in to phpMyAdmin, select your website’s database, click SQL and paste the code given below in the SQL command window.

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = ‘0’;

And now your site is.

This is one of those WordPress tips which can really save you a ton of time!

There are plenty of other tricks you can use to make your installation leaner, cleaner and hence faster. For example, a couple of simple tricks you should enable:

Read More: 3 Ways to Enable WordPress GZip Compression (faster website)

Read More: [How to] Leverage Browser Caching in WordPress with or without a plugin [5 ways]

14. Separate both comments and trackbacks

By default, WordPress combines both comments and trackbacks. Separating both can make things look more organized.

Step 1: Find the below code in the comments.php file.

Paste the below code after it.

Step 2: Then, look for the below code

Paste the below code before it

Step 3: Then, look for the following code

Paste the below code before it

 

Trackbacks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15. Increase PHP memory

If you were activating a huge plugin and found an error that says memory exhausted just add the following line of code to your wp-config.php file.

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

The above code will increase the memory limit to 64M, but you can change the value to whatever your hosting server can support. You should check whether the memory has increased to 64M by checking phpinfo() on your WordPress.

If you see that the memory did not change, contact your hosting to check whether you are allowed to reconfigure the memory and ask them to increase it for you.

16. Disable checking for plugin updates

WordPress automatically checks if plugins updates are available.

The below trick comes in handy, in some cases such as if you worry that updating plugins might break your site. Paste the following code to your functions file and disable checking for plugin updates.

WARNING: Disabling plugin updates could lead to your WordPress website being compromised. Enable this again once you’re ready from your testing.

remove_action( ‘load-update-core.php’, ‘wp_update_plugins’ );

add_filter( ‘pre_site_transient_update_plugins’, create_function( ‘$a’, “return null;” ) );

17. Increase/decrease maximum upload size through media uploader

Depending on the host, you’ll see a limit for the file size that you can upload through your Media uploader page in WP.

Add the below code to your .htaccess file to increase the upload limit to 64MB

php_value upload_max_filesize 64M

php_value post_max_size 64M

php_value max_execution_time 300

php_value max_input_time 300

We’re not sure what files you need to upload which are larger than 64M, but if you do, WordPress tips like this can quickly solve your issue.

Conversely, if you need to decrease the size of files which can be uploaded, all you need to do is lower the value to something like 2M or whatever you prefer.

18. Redirect to a maintenance page

Sometimes you may need to redirect the site to a maintenance page. Create a maintenance page and name it as maintenance.html. Upload it to the root directory. Add the below code to .htacess and redirect all traffic to maintenance.html

# Redirect all traffic to maintenance.html file

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.123\.123\.123

RewriteRule $ /maintenance.html [R=302,L]

Don’t forget to remove this once you are ready. Keep this for as short a time as possible because search engine crawlers such as Google will also be seeing this page instead of your regular content.

19. Custom error pages

Create error pages for 403, 404 and 500 errors and upload it to your base WordPress installation. Then, add the following code snippet to your .htaccess file to enable the custom error pages.

# Custom error page for error 403, 404 and 500
ErrorDocument 404 /404-error.html
ErrorDocument 403 / 403-error.html
ErrorDocument 500 / 500-error.html

20. Highlight author comments

To highlight the author’s comments, find the following code in your CSS file.

.bypostauthor { background: #eee; }

21. Stay logged in for a long(er) period

By default, WordPress keeps you logged in for 2 weeks if you check the “Remember me” option while logging in.

Add the following code snippet to the functions within your theme so you can stay logged in to your site for a year. You can convert any time to seconds and update accordingly if you want to be longer or shorter.

We would suggest going for a month: 2629746 seconds

Of course, with this WordPress tip, you can choose whatever value you want, just find the number of seconds add replace the value.

add_filter( ‘auth_cookie_expiration’, ‘stay_logged_in_for_1_year’ );
function stay_logged_in_for_1_year( $expire ) {
return 31556926; // 1 year in seconds
}

22. Change the footer text on the dashboard

Add the following code to functions file to customize the footer text on the WordPress dashboard.

function remove_footer_admin () {

  echo “Your own text”;

} 

add_filter(‘admin_footer_text’, ‘remove_footer_admin’);

23. Enable shortcodes on widgets

By default, WordPress widgets aren’t enabled to manage shortcodes. Add the following to functions file and empower your widgets to support shortcodes.

define(‘widget_text’, ‘do_shortcode’);

24. Change the length of excerpts

By default, length of the excerpts in WordPress is 55 words. Tweak the functions by adding the following commands to customize the length so it can fit the layout.

function custom_excerpt_length( $length ) {
  return 20;
}
add_filter( ‘excerpt_length’, ‘custom_excerpt_length’, 999 );

25. Display most commented posts

Add the following lines of code to enable another from the plenty of WordPress tips which uses hooks and the functions.php file of your theme

function wpb_most_commented_posts() {

ob_start();?>

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php to customize the text before the comment form. Replace the text with your own preferred text.

function collectiveray_comment_text_after($arg) {

$arg[‘comment_notes_after’] = “We enjoy your constructive comments but please comment responsibly. Trolling, harassment or otherwise abusive behaviour will not be tolerated and further action will be taken as necessary.”;

return $arg; }

add_filter(‘comment_form_defaults’, ‘collectiveray_comment_text_after’);

27. Identify unused tags

If you delete old posts manually from MySQL, the tags you used on the posts will remain unused. Run the following SQL query to identify such unused tags. This is one of those WordPress tips which needs a bit of attention, because deleting stuff which is necessary can break your site.

SELECT * From wp_terms wt

INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy wtt ON wt.term_id=wtt.term_id WHERE wtt.taxonomy=’post_tag’ AND wtt.count=0;

28. Redirect mobile users to mobile site

This trick comes in handy if you like to keep a mobile version of your site to the responsive version. Add the following commands to the .htaccess file to redirect the mobile users to a mobile version of the site.

RewriteEngine On

# Check for mime types commonly accepted by mobile devices

RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} “text\/vnd\.wap\.wml|application\/vnd\.wap\.xhtml\+xml” [NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$

RewriteRule ^ https://m.domain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]

29. Remove help and screen options from dashboard

This WordPress tip cleans your admin dashboard from unnecessary clutter. You can see the options “help” and “screen” on the top right hand side of your WP dashboard. Add the following code to functions to remove these options from the dashboard.

add_filter( ‘contextual_help’, ‘wpse_25034_remove_dashboard_help_tab’, 999, 3 );

add_filter( ‘screen_options_show_screen’, ‘wpse_25034_remove_help_tab’ );

function wpse_25034_remove_dashboard_help_tab( $old_help, $screen_id, $screen )

  {

     if( ‘dashboard’ != $screen->base )

     return $old_help;

     $screen->remove_help_tabs();

     return $old_help;

  }

function wpse_25034_remove_help_tab( $visible )

  {

     global $current_screen;

     if( ‘dashboard’ == $current_screen->base )

     return false;

     return $visible;

  }

30. Show popular posts in the sidebar

To show the 5 most popular posts according to the comments count, place the below lines in the sidebar.php file. Of course, if you want to show more or less than 5, just change from 5 to another value you prefer in the $result line.

Popular Posts

   

• • 31. Add breadcrumbs to your theme

    To add breadcrumbs, add the following lines to your functions file.

    function the_breadcrumb() {

            echo ‘

    • ‘;

        if (!is_home()) {

            echo ‘

       

    • • • ‘;            the_category(‘title_li=’);            if (is_single()) {                echo “

         

      • • “;                the_title();                echo ‘

      ‘;

                  }

              } elseif (is_page()) {

                  echo ‘

         

      • • ‘;            echo the_title();            echo ‘

      ‘;

              }

          }

          elseif (is_tag()) {single_tag_title();}

          elseif (is_day()) {echo”

         

      • • Archive for “; the_time(‘F jS, Y’); echo’

      ‘;}

          elseif (is_month()) {echo”

         

      • • Archive for “; the_time(‘F, Y’); echo’

      ‘;}

          elseif (is_year()) {echo”

         

      • • Archive for “; the_time(‘Y’); echo’

      ‘;}

          elseif (is_author()) {echo”

         

      • • Author Archive”; echo’

      ‘;}

          elseif (isset($_GET[‘paged’]) && !empty($_GET[‘paged’])) {echo “

         

      • • Blog Archives”; echo’

      ‘;}

          elseif (is_search()) {echo”

         

      • • Search Results”; echo’

      ‘;}

          echo ‘

      ‘;

      }

      After that, add this line of code to your theme’s template where you would like the breadcrumbs to show up (e.g. single.php, archives.php, etc.).

      < ?php the_breadcrumb(); ?>

      32. Customize your sidebar for individual posts

      Display customized sidebar content for individual posts using custom fields. At first, find the following line of code in your single.php, index.php and page.php file.
      
      php get_sidebar(); ?>
      
      Replace it with the following code snippet.

      php $sidebar = get_post_meta($post->ID, “sidebar”, true);
      get_sidebar($sidebar);
      ?>
      
      When writing a post, create new custom fields named sidebar. In the value section, mention the name of the sidebar you want to display so if you built two different sidebar files (e.g. sidebar-category.php and sidebar-promotion.php) and wanted to show the sidebar-category.php, you’d use the key as “sidebar” and value as “sidebar-category“.

      33. Define how individual posts should be displayed on the homepage

      Most of the themes display all of your posts in the same way on the homepage. That is, on the homepage, either it shows excerpts only or it shows the full post. However, you may not want to display all of your posts in the same way on the homepage.

      Find the loop in your index.php file and replace it with the following so that you can define how each post should be displayed.

      In the above WordPress tips, by default excerpts are displayed on the homepage. To show posts fully on the homepage, create a custom field ‘full’ from the post editor and give it any value.

      34. Link to external links from your post titles

      Usually, titles of blog posts in the homepage are linked to the original post URL.

      However, if the sole purpose of publishing a particular blog post is to share a particular external link, you may not want to entice the users to open up your post. Instead, the users can visit the external link by simply clicking the blog post title from the homepage itself. Add the following code to functions.php file.

      function print_post_title() {

      global $post;

      $thePostID = $post->ID;

      $post_id = get_post($thePostID);

      $title = $post_id->post_title;

      $perm = get_permalink($post_id);

      $post_keys = array(); $post_val = array();

      $post_keys = get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);

      if (!empty($post_keys)) {

      foreach ($post_keys as $pkey) {

      if ($pkey==’url1′ || $pkey==’title_url’ || $pkey==’url_title’) {

      $post_val = get_post_custom_values($pkey);

      }

      }

      if (empty($post_val)) {

      $link = $perm;

      } else {

      $link = $post_val[0];

      }

      } else {

      $link = $perm;

      }

      echo ‘

      ‘.$title.’

      ‘;

      }

      Then, open your index.php and find the following code

      Replace it with the below code and you’re done!

      35. Add featured image support for your theme

      ‘Featured images’ is one of the most popular features of WordPress.

      It is supported in most of the themes available today. However, if your theme doesn’t support this feature, you can add support for this feature by tweaking the theme’s functions file

      add_theme_support( ‘post-thumbnails’ );

      36. Custom CSS for individual posts

      You may need to use custom stylesheet for individual posts. Insert the following code in header.php betweenand

      Wrapping Up

      Of course, we've included these 101 WordPress tips tricks and tweaks in this article because we believe these are some of the best optimizations for WordPress which you can implement quickly and easily without having to hire a developer.

      These are small changes in the code which you can quickly achieve yourself without risking breaking your website or your WordPress template 😉