Dejunking WordPress options

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While investigating a slow WordPress installation, I came across this post on how to check if autoloaded options are a factor in the slowdown.

How To Remove Unwanted Autoloaded Data on a WordPress Website

I had no idea that plugins would leave so much junk behind! Here are the two queries to investigate. One to see how big the total options are, and the second to find the worst offenders.

SELECT SUM(LENGTH(option_value)) as autoload_size FROM wp_options WHERE autoload=’yes’;

SELECT LENGTH(option_value),option_name FROM wp_options WHERE autoload=’yes’ ORDER BY length(option_value) DESC LIMIT 15;

For the site I was working on, I set the unnecessary options to autoload=’no’ … just in case it would affect the site.

Adding stuff after the body tag in WordPress

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Today I had to add some retargeting code to a site, and my research revealed that I needed to add it to the functions.php of the theme. No problem.


function jr_add_floodlight_retargeting() {
// Added 4/14/21 by EKB to put code on landing page for Floodlight campaign 
   if ( isset( $_GET['utm_source'] ) ) {
      if($_GET['utm_source'] == "ww") {
        ?>
         ... javascript code here ...
        <?php
      }
   }
} // end function jr_add_floodlight_retargeting
add_action( 'wp_body_open', 'jr_add_floodlight_retargeting' );

But then, my code wasn’t firing properly, and I discovered that the child theme was old enough that it didn’t have the necessary code in header.php. I found out from this article:

WordPress 5.2 action that every theme should use

Added that code to the theme’s header file, and away I went! Yay.

Spam comments on media attachment pages

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One of our clients was getting spam comments on her media attachment pages, so I found this handy little plugin to make it so the attachment pages are no longer available for those kinds of shenanigans. It solves the problem nicely by redirecting each page to the media file itself.

Disable Media Pages

A similar feature is available in Yoast SEO, so if you have that plugin, you can go to SEO -> Search Appearance -> Media tab and turn on the option to Redirect attachment URLs. Sweet!

 

A-PDF Thumbnailer

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A-PDF Thumbnailer

We’ve been working on a project with lots of PDF files, and the download manager plugin makes use of featured images for the downloads. In the past, I’ve struggled with creating thumbnails of the first page… it had been a very time-intensive process.

Then, I found A-PDF Thumbnailer!! It made creation of the thumbnails really easy. After fiddling with it for a few minutes, I was able to create high quality, properly-sized thumbnails for a big batch of PDFs. And it’s quite a bargain at $27… it saved me hours of work.

You can download the trial version to see it in action before buying. It does even more than just creating thumbnails, but I haven’t needed to do that yet. Maybe someday. For Windows only.

XML RPC in WordPress

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Attackers quite frequently try to exploit xml-rpc.php, a built-in file for WordPress which provides access to external services, such as JetPack, marketing services, etc. Most sites don’t need this functionality, so it can be blocked. I found this article listing a couple of ways to do it, and it’s one of the services we’ll add to our site this year, as part of the security checkup.

Two Ways to Fully Disable WordPress XML-RPC

You have to be careful, sure that nothing is using it. I wonder if there’s a plugin already out there which helps determine if it’s being used on a site. Will check and update if I find something.