The One with the Thoughts of Frans

Most people seem to have switched to statically generated blogs like Hugo by now, but I’ve been using WordPress for some 13 years and combined with WP-Super-Cache it’s been static for pretty much that entire time. There’s little point to putting in extra time and effort just for some extra nerd cred.

On the downside, every new 4.0+ release seems to add more cruft to the header. My functions.php consists of an ever-growing list of remove_action incantations. Here’s the latest addition, necessitated by WordPress 4.9.

// remove WP 4.9+ dns-prefetch nonsense
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_resource_hints', 2 );

For those interested, here’s my full messy collection, including a few hints I commented out.

add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' );// See http://wordpress.mfields.org/2010/excerpts-for-pages-in-wordpress-3-0/
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');// Windows Live Writer? Ew!
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');// Windows Live Writer? Ew!
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');// No need to know my WP version quite that easily

// remove WP 4.2+ emoji nonsense
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'print_emoji_detection_script', 7 );
remove_action( 'admin_print_scripts', 'print_emoji_detection_script' );
remove_action( 'wp_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles' );
remove_action( 'admin_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles' );

// remove WP 4.9+ dns-prefetch nonsense
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_resource_hints', 2 );

// disable embeds nonsense; not even sure what it does
// Remove the REST API endpoint.
remove_action('rest_api_init', 'wp_oembed_register_route');
// Turn off oEmbed auto discovery.
// Don't filter oEmbed results.
remove_filter('oembed_dataparse', 'wp_filter_oembed_result', 10);
// Remove oEmbed discovery links.
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_oembed_add_discovery_links');
// Remove oEmbed-specific JavaScript from the front-end and back-end.
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_oembed_add_host_js');

// Jetpack
//remove_action('wp_head', 'shortlink_wp_head'); // Don't need wp.me shortlinks
// No jQuery! (als Jetpack
//if( !is_admin()){
	//wp_deregister_script('jquery');
	//wp_register_script('jquery', ("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"), false, '1.3.2');
	//wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
//}

// remove OneAll Social script from regular page
remove_action ('wp_head', 'oa_social_login_add_javascripts');

When I logged in, WordPress tried to inform me that the particular browser I was using was out of date.

So, is it?

Well, we can take a look at the Firefox ESR download page to find out.

Nope. Still Firefox 52, which will remain supported until Firefox 60.

Always fun, these automated checks. 🙂

For a long time I’ve been aware of the fact that few, if any, WordPress themes seemed to do anything with the META element’s description feature. I never bothered to look into a solution, especially since I never used to add excerpts to my posts half a decade ago. However, I’ve bothered to do so ever since I started notifying people about updates on Twitter. It already makes the search results much more readable if you’re looking for something in the archives of this site, and I figured I should do the same for search engines.

Some uneventful searching later I found what I was looking for, but it definitely wasn’t right for me: I’ve got a huge volume of posts without any excerpts, so printing empty descriptions no matter what would be silly at best, and besides there are more descriptions out there than merely those of posts. After all, categories and even my site itself have a description as well. The comment by Matthew Slyman was much more to my liking, which I then customized as follows:

<?php
$desc;
if ( is_single() ) {
	$desc = get_the_excerpt();
}
elseif ( is_page() ) {
	$desc = get_the_excerpt();
}
elseif ( is_category() ) {
	$desc = category_description();
}
elseif ( is_home() ) {
	$desc = get_bloginfo('description');
}
$desc = htmlspecialchars(trim(strip_tags($desc)));
if (!empty($desc)) {
	echo '<meta name="description" content="';
	echo $desc;
	echo '"/>';
}
?>

Add the whole thing anywhere in your HEAD element in header.php. If excerpts seem to be missing from pages, there’s a simple solution. If you want to reuse the code above for some reason, wrap some sort of function around it and stick it in functions.php. Enjoy.

WordPress can’t cope with day/month/year (/%day%/%monthnum%/%year%/) permalinks properly by default. I had no idea because I’ve always used year/month[/day]. It’s fine for the posts, but in the archives /date/month/year fails. Luckily WP (WordPress) supports plugins in a clever manner, and it has a great API (application programming interface).

Initially I tried the WP API:

add_rewrite_rule('date/(\d{1,2})/(\d{4})', 'index.php?m=$matches[2]$matches[1]', 'top');

This kept giving me an error which I couldn’t (be bothered to) debug since it went several functions deep into the WP core, so I gave up on the API and circumvented it with the help of something I found.

Anyhow, here’s the plugin. Save in a file named rewrite-day-month-year.php or just name it whatever you like.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Rewrite Rules for Day/Month/Year
Plugin URI: //fransdejonge.com/2010/01/teaching-wordpress-some-manners-enabling-daymonthyear-archives
Description: WordPress can't cope with /%day%/%monthnum%/%year%/ for some reason. That is to day, it fails when you try to go for an archive in the form of /date/month/year/ This teaches it some manners. Probably/hopefully shouldn't interfere with other structures, but why you'd activate it if you don't need it I wouldn't know.
Version: 1.0
License: GPL
Author: Frans
Author URI: //fransdejonge.com

Based on http://dd32.id.au/files/wordpress/test-rewrite.php
*/

function test_add_rewrite_rules( $wp_rewrite ) {
	$new_rules = array(
		"date/(\d{2})/(\d{4})" => 'index.php?m=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(2) . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1),
		"date/(\d{4})" => 'index.php?year=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1)
	);
	$wp_rewrite->rules = $new_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules; //NOTE: You must add it to the start of the array, Else WP's greedy rules at the end of the array will eat the request
}

register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'flush_rules_initiate' );
register_deactivation_hook( __FILE__, 'test_flush_rules' );
// add_action('init','test_flush_rules'); // for testing

function flush_rules_initiate() {
	// Add the permalink override stuff
	add_action('generate_rewrite_rules', 'test_add_rewrite_rules');
	test_flush_rules();
}

function test_flush_rules(){
	//Flush the rewrite rules so that the new rules from this plugin get added,
	//This should only be done when the rewrite rules are changing, Ie. When this plugin is activated(Or Deactivated), For simplicity while developing using WP Rewrite, I flush the rules on every page load
	global $wp_rewrite;
	$wp_rewrite->flush_rules();
}
?>