Now, as “everyday” as WordPress may have become – for the fact that every second or third website you come across is powered by WordPress – there are always the frequent “how the heck did they do this!” moments when you are scrolling around the WordPress realm.

Despite WordPress being so remarkably pursued by the web development community, it has never ceased to wear some incredible tricks and surprises up its sleeve. While there is a whole ensemble of plugins that never fail to take a WordPress website’s functionality beyond defaults and succeed in letting webmasters shape their website in exactly the same way they want to, it is the WordPress Hacks that well and truly give the webmasters a customization capability of the likes of which can’t be accomplished by any plugins whatsoever.

The WordPress hacks are establishing a strong foothold and gaining a lot of ground as the non-programming webmasters are seeking the help of some web developers to inject few features in their website that would really help them enhance its functionality and take it beyond its peers. We, however, are making your job easier by tossing at you few code snippets you would need (and want) to get your website rolling in just the direction you want it to.

The following list is about such hacks that you can implement on your website for it to boast of exceptional custom capabilities and flaunt features that seem pretty improbable otherwise.

1. Enabling Shortcodes in Widgets

Widgets never cease to give our website that edge we are always vying for. They form an indispensable part of just about every WordPress website, and thus, a way to enhance their appearance or their features is always welcome, and that’s exactly what the shortcodes are meant to do. Use a filter for the same:

add_filter( 'widget_text', 'do_shortcode' );

2. Making the Top Navigation More Visible

The menu on the top navigation bar of your website is probably ignorable, simply for its position. And this is why you need to move it and this is where moving it will help:

#top-nav {float: right;}

3. Move the Navigation menu to the Center (Code courtesy: GitHub)

There is every possibility that you may have decided to realign your logo to place it at the center of the header, so, you would need to move the navigation menu to the center so that it doesn’t look out of the place. And this is how you do it:

#navigation {
     position: relative;
}
 #main-nav {
     clear: left;
     float: left;
     list-style: none;
     margin: 0;
     padding: 0;
     position: relative;
     left: 50%;
     text-align: center;
}
 .nav li {
     display: block;
     float: left;
     list-style: none;
     margin: 0;
     padding: 0;
     position: relative;
     right: 50%;
}
 .nav li.hover, .nav li.hover {
     position: relative;
}
 
.nav li ul li {
     left: 0;

4. Delay Publishing Your Post on the RSS Feeds

It’s not rare to make mistakes while writing a post, but when the posts are already sent to RSS, the minor mistakes can prove to be costly enough. And this is when delaying the process comes to the rescue.

Now, you can make sure that the posts don’t go to the RSS feed as soon as you publish them on your blog. All you need to do is to add this piece of code to the functions.php file in your website’s backend:

function publish_later_on_feed($where) {
global $wpdb;
if ( is_feed() ) {
$time_now = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$time_delay = '15'; // integer
$time_span = 'MINUTE'; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR
$where = " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$time_now') > $time_delay ";
}
return $where;
}
add_filter('posts_where', 'publish_later_on_feed');

5. Don’t Want the Circular Avatars Anymore? Make Them Squarish

The theme you have chosen for your WordPress website may be automatically modifying the avatar images to present them in a circular form. But many webmaster would rather prefer their avatars to be displayed in a square form. For the same, this code by GitHub works exceptionally well:

#post-author .profile-image img, #comments .avatar img {
border-radius: 0; 
-moz-border-radius: 0; 
-webkit-border-radius: 0;
}

6. Let Your RSS Feed Contain the Post’s Featured Image

Using pictures in your posts always gives it an extra push among your audience and coaxes them to read and further share it among their circles. And when you are able to use the featured image of the post in your RSS Feeds, you further enhance the reach of the post by making it visually catchier:

add_filter('the_content_feed', 'rss_post_thumbnail');
function rss_post_thumbnail($content) {
global $post;
if( has_post_thumbnail($post->ID) )
$content = '<p>' . get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID, 'thumbnail') . '</p>' . $content;
return $content;
}

7. Remove the Title of a Particular Page

While there are tools that facilitate removing titles from all the pages of the site, at times, you only want to remove them from particular pages. And here is the code you need for that – just replace “abcd” with the page id number for any post:

.page-id-xxxx .title {
display: none;
}

8. Don’t Want HTML in Comments? Go Ahead and Disable it

HTML in the comment section can lead to a truckload of spam, which eventually might have serious repercussions on your website. And this is why disabling the HTML in comment section is so critically important to keep your website free of spam. To do so, add this piece of code in the functions.php file:

//As soon as someone comments
function plc_comment_post( $incoming_comment ) {
    // convert everything in a comment to display literally
    $incoming_comment['comment_content'] = htmlspecialchars($incoming_comment['comment_content']);
    // the one exception is single quotes, which cannot be #039; because WordPress marks it as spam
    $incoming_comment['comment_content'] = str_replace( "'", ''', $incoming_comment['comment_content'] );
    return( $incoming_comment );
}
// This will occur before a comment is displayed
function plc_comment_display( $comment_to_display ) {
    // Put the single quotes back in
    $comment_to_display = str_replace( ''', "'", $comment_to_display );
    return $comment_to_display;
}
add_filter( 'preprocess_comment', 'plc_comment_post', '', 1 );
add_filter( 'comment_text', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1 );
add_filter( 'comment_text_rss', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1 );
add_filter( 'comment_excerpt', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1 );
// This stops WordPress from trying to automatically make hyperlinks on text:
remove_filter( 'comment_text', 'make_clickable', 9 );

9. When a User Searches for a Certain Post on your site, Just take them directly to the Complete Post

You may not have deemed it all too necessary, but if the users who search for particular posts are taken directly to the full post instead of a thumbnail view of it with excerpt, they’d appreciate that. It doesn’t force them to continue navigating and thus improves the user-experience considerably well.

add_action('template_redirect', 'redirect_single_post');
function redirect_single_post() {
    if (is_search()) {
        global $ks29so_query;
        if ($ks29so_query->post_count == 1 && $ks29so_query->max_num_pages == 1) {
            ks29so_redirect( get_permalink( $ks29so_query->posts['0']->ID ) );
            exit;
        }
    }
}

10. Display the Most Accurate and Current Copyright Date

Copyright is an indispensable part of any website that contains a lot of useful information that the webmaster doesn’t want to be copied by the other randomizers on the web. This is why displaying copyright information accurately and in sync with the current year is important. The following piece of code makes it possible for you to constantly update the copyright information automatically:

function comicpress_copyright() {
global $wpdb;
$copyright_dates = $wpdb->get_results("
SELECT
YEAR(min(post_date_gmt)) AS firstdate,
YEAR(max(post_date_gmt)) AS lastdate
FROM
$wpdb->posts
WHERE
post_status = 'publish'
");
$output = '';
if($copyright_dates) {
$copyright = "© " . $copyright_dates[0]->firstdate;
if($copyright_dates[0]->firstdate != $copyright_dates[0]->lastdate) {
$copyright .= '-' . $copyright_dates[0]->lastdate;
}
$output = $copyright;
}
return $output;
}

11. Redirect Users After they Log in

Once any user is logged into your site, he or she can be easily redirected to another URL of your choice. All you need is this code snippet in the functions.php file:

<?php function redirect_user_on_role() { //retrieve current user info global $current_user; get_currentuserinfo(); //If login user role is Subscriber if ($current_user->user_level == 0)
{
ks29so_redirect( home_url() ); exit;
}
//If login user role is Contributor
else if ($current_user->user_level > 1)
{
ks29so_redirect( home_url() ); exit;
}
//If login user role is Editor
else if ($current_user->user_level >8)
{
ks29so_redirect( home_url() ); exit;
}
// For other roles
else
{
$redirect_to = 'http://google.com/';
return $redirect_to;
}
}
add_action('admin_init','redirect_user_on_role');

?>

12. Let the Header Display Some Personalized Widgets

The header of your website is a great advertising area where you can display really noticeable ads. However, one common thing that is observed is that the site admins don’t enjoy a lot of control over how they wish to display elements on the header and this leads to the lack of flexibility.

What admin want is the customization capability to let them add whatever they want to the right of the logo, and the following lines of code lets them do exactly that:

if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar(array(
 'name' => 'Header Widget',
 'id' => 'header-widget',
 'description' => 'This is a widgetized area in the right side of the header.',
 'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" div class="widget">',
 'after_widget' => '</div>',
 'before_title' => '<h3>',
 'after_title' => '</h3>'
 ));
add_action( 'woo_header_inside', 'custom_canvas_header' );
function custom_canvas_header () {
?>
<div id="header-widget">
<?php if (function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('header-widget')) : else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
<?php
}
}

13. Give Dashboard a Personalized Logo

Many webmasters are vying to have a more personalized logo for their dashboard in the WordPress backend. The following code serves the purpose, even when it is the client that has come to you with this kind of a request:

add_action('admin_head', 'custom_logo');
function custom_logo() {
echo '
<style type="text/css"><!--
#header-logo { background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom-logo.gif) !important; }
--></style>';
}

14. Set the Editor You Want to as Default

You may not be all too keen on using the Visual Editor, and instead, it is the HTML Editor that has caught your fancy. Well, either way, you have the freedom to choose what editor you wish to set as the default one:

# Visual Editor as default
add_filter( 'ks29so_default_editor', create_function('', 'return "tinymce";') );

# HTML Editor as default
add_filter( 'ks29so_default_editor', create_function('', 'return "html";') );
15. Cast Away the Primary or Top Navigation
Canvas, in particular, has two navigation bars. One navigation bar is located above the header and it is thereby called the Top Navigation Bar. Then, you have the Primary Navigation that is located below the header. Now, whether you wish to use both or just one is entirely your prerogative, on our end, we can show you how to remove them:
Primary Navigation can be gotten rid of by this code:
add_action( 'init', 'remove_canvas_main_navigation', 10 );
 
function remove_canvas_main_navigation () {
    // Remove main nav from the woo_header_after hook
    remove_action( 'woo_header_after','woo_nav', 10 );
}
And to remove the Top Navigation, you will need this:
add_action( 'init', 'remove_canvas_top_navigation', 10 );
 
function remove_canvas_top_navigation () {
    // Remove top nav from the woo_top hook
    remove_action( 'woo_top', 'woo_top_navigation', 10 );
}

So, these are some of the most incredibly effective WordPress hacks that command all your attention. When having free rein over your website’s functionality is on the agenda, the above WordPress hacks serve the purpose in a manner most seamless and surgical.