Customize the Link to WordPress within the Meta Widget Link List

Following my standards for external links, I also wanted the link to WordPress listed in the Meta widget link list to open a new browser tab or page. Unfortunately, the widget itself does not offers the opportunity to modify the link to WordPress. Digging into the code, I found the …

Remove Login/Logout Link from WordPress’ Sidebar Meta Widget

WordPress’ default sidebar meta widget contains a link to the login page. Following the “security by obscurity approach to prevent others to try to login to my WordPress instance (in this case ignoring the recommendation that system security should not depend on the secrecy of the implementation or its components), …

Manual Changes required when Restoring a Database to another WordPress Installation

For testing purposes, I restored the WordPress database of this blog to my development WordPress instance. When I tried to open the login page, the browser told me it was not able to establish a connection to the server at localhost (WordPress dev instance is running on localhost). Looking at …

Block suspicious Post View Requests in WordPress

After adding a post view counter to my blog (see “Counting Post Views in WordPress without PlugIn” for details), I noticed some strange view counts on one of the posts. From one day to another, the counter of this specific post jumped from about 200 to more than 12,500. And …

“Error establishing a database connection” when installing WordPress on Windows 10 using WampServer

When I noticed some (not successful) hacking attempts on this blog, I tried to install WordPress locally on a Windows 10 machine (and finally did). wpbeginner, like usually, offers a nice tutorial about how to install it including all other required applications (Web server, database, PHP runtime). Following this tutorial, …

Extended Customization of the WordPress Comment Form

Preparing this blog to become GDPR compliant, I wanted to customize the comment form to only ask for the comment itself, plus having a checkbox that the author agrees with the storage and handling of the data. In the background, the author’s IP address should not be stored any more. …

Moving this WordPress Blog to HTTPS URL in a Single Action

Preface This post is from a developer for developers having, beyond others, a solid SQL knowledge and understanding. If you have the slightest doubt you might not be one of those, please do not follow the steps described below! Of course, if you know you are not a developer at …