WordPress comes ready to use as soon as it installs. However in order to properly leverage the power of WordPress you need to customize WordPress so that it works and performs at its peak. Here are a few WordPress tips that should help you get off to a flying start.
Remove the version number
By default WordPress adds the version number to the header of your blog. The information in your header might prove to be a goldmine for a hacker who are trying to take down or take over your blog since you are using an older version of WordPress which is not as secure as the latest version. All you need to do to remove this is to add this line: <?php remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’); ?> to the functions.php file which is located in your themes folder.
Prevent snooping in your WordPress files:
With the default options people can easily browse through your WordPress folder and files using explorer view within their web browsers. In order to prevent this you just need to add the following line of code: Options All –Indexes to your .htaccess file that can be found the main worpress directory.
Filter out spammers:
Spammers love to include .html code in their comments so that they can some how attract people to their comments. Even if you aren’t targeted by spammers it’s always a good idea to reduce the load on your blog especially as a result of spam comments. The best way to disable html code in the comments box is to add the following line of code in your functions.php file: add_filter( ‘pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_specialchars’ );.
Speed up sitemap creation:
This tip is for those who use the XML sitemaps plug-in. usually its set to “rebuild sitemap if you change the content of your blog”, you need to change that to “enable manual sitemap building via GET request. The reason you should do this is because in auto mode every time you make a post its going to take a very long time for your post to process because your entire sitemap is going to be redone from the very beginning. For very large blogs it can even take up to half an hour.
