WordPress is a large content management system that adds plenty of features to your published site. Most site owners do not need these default additions for running a blog or simple website. It is also necessary to optimize WordPress site in order to load faster and protect from malicious attackers to keep it sage. In this article, we will explain the complete list of WordPress default additions and how to disable these items in WordPress for security and optimization reasons.
Frontend and Backend Items to Disable
WordPress has both frontend and backend items that you may not need in all situations. Let us explain here with few examples before going to the complete list.
- You are running a content site and do not have any blog on the site. In this case, you can simply disable blog related stuffs like comments, pingbacks, gravatar, feeds, etc.
- You are primarily working with custom post types that supports the old Classic Editor. This essentially means, you do not the scripts and styles from Gutenberg editor both in backend and frontend.
- You are not using emoji or embedding content from other websites. Here, you can improve the page loading speed by disabling emoji and embed scripts loading on each page on your site.
The list is so big that you will be surprised to know that WordPress adds so many unnecessary items on your website.
Do I Need to Disable All Items?
The answers depends on the type of site you run and the functionalities you need. As mentioned, most of these default items are not needed and you can remove them safely to protect your site and improve page loading speed.
Complete List of Items to Disable in WordPress
Here is a complete list of items that you can disable in WordPress. We have provided each item with the purpose and reason why you may need to remove from your site.
1. Feeds
WordPress generates multiple RSS and ATOM feeds for feedreaders to grab your latest content. Many auto-blogging plugins will use these feeds to scarp content from your site without permission. Therefore, if you are not offering content feed to your readers, it is good idea to disable these feeds.
2. RSD Links
WordPress adds Really Simple Discovery (RSD) links in the header section, which you can find in the source code. This is useful for publishing content with third-party blogging clients. Unless you are using external blogging clients, this just adds extra code and you should cleanup the header to load the page faster.
3. WLW manifest Link
Windows Live Writer (WLW) links are added in the source for publishing content when using Windows Live Writer. This code is not needed if you are not using Windows Live Writer.
4. XML-RPC
This is a WordPress feature to enable external data transmission through HTTP protocol for remote publishing. You should disable XML-RPC for security reasons. Note that some functions like WordPress Jetpack mobile apps will not work if you disable XML-RPC.
5. Emoji Script
WordPress uses a piece of script to embed emoji from Unicode. You can disable emoji script to reduce the JavaScript used on the page. You can still insert emoji by copy paste or using default emoji keyboards in mobile and desktop devices.
6. Gravatar
This is a small profile picture linked to your email and loaded from gravatar.com. These images are attractive when loaded with comments author biography sections to see the user’s profile image. However, loading gravatar images will drag the page’s speed by requesting multiple HTTP calls from gravatar.com. You can disable this for reducing HTTP requests and improving page loading speed.
7. WordPress Version
By default, WordPress will use a generator meta tag in the header to add the installed version. This can create a security problem when you are using older versions. Since it does not add any value for the site owner, you should consider removing the meta tag.
8. Shortlink
WordPress adds a permanent link of the page like “url/?p=123” in the header section. First, this is not at all needed. Second, this will be an overhead when you use different permalink structure.
9. Previous and next post links
Links to previous and next blog posts are inserted in the WordPress header. Generally, your theme will offer previous / next post links after the content area. Therefore, you can remove this unnecessary code from the header section.
10. Embeds
WordPress embeds help you to paste the URL from any supported service provider to show the content. For example, simply paste any image URL to insert the image using Embed block in Gutenberg editor. Anyone can also paste your site’s URL to consume bandwidth of your server. You can disable the embeds if not used on your site.
11. Heartbeat API
This is an API to get live data updates in WordPress admin dashboard. You can disable this as it can drain the hosting server’s resources.
12. JSON API
This is a REST API that helps developers to use the content. You can view the content using the URL “https://www.yoursite.com/ wp-json/wp/v2”. You can disable it for security reasons and prevent content scraping. However, some plugins may not work if you disable this feature. Make sure to test the site thoroughly after disabling.
13. Query Strings
Theme and plugins developers add the version at the end of CSS and JS files for easy version management. It may look like “https”//www.yoursite.com/yourplugin.css/?v1.0” in the source code. These files with query strings can’t be cached easily as the version will change frequently. This will create speed problems in Google PageSpeed Insights and other tools. Though caching plugins and CDN can still cache the files with query strings, it is better to remove them.
14. Website Link in Comments Form
By default, WordPress offers a comment form that includes name, email and website URL. The website URL will be linked automatically to the comment submitter on a published site. Unfortunately, this is one of the major sources of spamming on WordPress sites as the commenter can leave irrelevant URL. You can remove this to accept comments only from legitimate users.
15. Comments
By default, comments are enabled for blog posts in WordPress. You can disable this when you do not have blog on your site. It is also possible to disable comments only for specific posts or after certain point of time from published date.
16. Self-Pingbacks
Pingback feature will track the mention of the post URL and link to comment section of the post. Self-pingback is created when you use a link in your own blog. This is unnecessary junk and clutter the comment section of your posts.
17. jQuery Migrate
WordPress stopped using jQuery Migrate from version 5.5. Some of your plugins and theme may load this for compatibility reasons. So, check and disable it if your site does not need this.
18. Dashicons
This is the official WordPress icons set used only on admin panel. You can remove them from the frontend if loaded by your theme or plugin.
19. Attachment Pages
WordPress creates attachment page for each media file you upload. This page contains only an image or media you have uploaded causing thin content problem. Redirect all attachment pages to parent media or parent post using Yoast SEO, Rank Math or similar plugin to improve the SEO.
20. Disable Smart Quotes
By default, WordPress uses smart quotes in the editor. This can create problem when you want to showcase a piece of code. Disable smart quotes and use straight quotes to avoid confusion. Also, make sure to use the Code block instead of paragraph for inserting code.
21. Disable Revisions
This is an additional post type generated by WordPress for versioning and restoring purposes. You do not need revisions unless you are preparing mission critical content in the editor. It is always a good idea that you prepare content offline using tools like Microsoft Word and then copy / paste in the editor.
22. Date Archives
Date archive pages are generated based on the published date of the articles. If you are not publishing large amount of articles on daly basis, each date archive page will have a list of one or two articles creating thin content. So, you can remove them if not needed.
23. Author Archive
Author archive pages are created for each author on your site. This is unnecessary for a single author blog to avoid duplication with blog index page.
24. Disable Auto Updates
WordPress offers auto-update feature for theme, plugins and core WordPress software. Though it is very useful to save your time, auto-updating without testing can create ultimate disaster if a plugin or theme create conflicts with your setup. Especially, disable auto updates for plugins used for online store (WooCommerce), caching and optimization purposes.
25. Disable Global Styles
Gutenberg editor will add few lines of inline CSS code for supporting core blocks. You can remove this to reduce the inline codes and improve page speed. However, this may affect the features like adding background colors to blocks and group of blocks.
26. Readme.txt
This is one of the default files supplied with core WordPress software that you can access from the browser. Make sure to delete it for security reasons.
27. Password Strength Meter
WordPress and WooCommerce loads a script to force users to use strong passwords. Disable this script on the pages where you do not need passwords to be used.
28. WooCommerce AJAX
WooCommerce plugin makes AJAX calls for cart and dashboard widgets update. Disable this to improve the page loading speed, especially when you have no item in the cart.
29. Google Fonts
Many themes load Google Fonts downloading multiple files from Google’s server. This is a page speed killer as the font loading will stop rendering your page’s content. Either combine or disable Google Fonts to speed up your site.
30. Gutenberg Editor
Gutenberg is the default WordPress editor for content editing and adding widgets. You can disable Gutenberg if you are primarily handling custom post types like WooCommerce products or bbPress forum that works only with Classic Editor.
How to Remove Default Items in WordPress?
Now, the question is how to remove these default items from the site. Unfortunately, you may not be able to remove all these items using a single plugin. You may need to use multiple plugins depending upon the need. In addition, your caching or speed optimization plugin may offer some of these functions like disabling emoji script. Therefore, you may need multiple plugins to completely get rid of these items from your site.
Here are some of the recommendations from our point of view:
- WP Rocket
- Perfmatters
- Clearfy – WordPress optimization plugin and disable ultimate tweaker
- Security Optimizer and Speed Optimizer combination for SiteGround users
You can use Perfmatters and WP Rocket combination to get the maximum optimization. However, both these plugins are available only as premium versions and you need to have a yearly subscription. Below is the “General” settings section from Perfmatters plugin showing the toggles available to disable the bloats.
