WP Core Hacks Used at Perishable Press

One of the necessary evils associated with creating a highly customized WordPress-powered site involves the inevitable necessity to hack the WordPress core. WordPress is built for mass-consumption and tends to cater to the largest audience possible, making it necessary to bend and poke around the corners to get WordPress to function in a more specific or specialized capacity.

Of course, there is a major downside to tweaking core WordPress files: upgrading. The overambitious WordPress peeps are constantly rolling out upgrade after upgrade, many of which are required security fixes, patches, or whatever. The point is that editing the WordPress core on your current version of WordPress requires that you edit each and every subsequent upgrade, for each and every one of your sites.

Over time, I have realized the importance of documenting core changes for any sites that require them. Having a concise record of the files and code involved with each hack greatly facilitates the entire upgrade process. Without such a reference, subtle changes may be forgotten and key hacks may be overlooked. Here at Perishable Press, my former Core Hacks Log served me well from WordPress 1.5 to 2.0, however, much of it no longer applies to the new WordPress 2.3 configuration. Since the latest site overhaul, I have dramatically reduced the overall number of required core edits.

In this post, I have created a new list of WordPress core hacks used here at Perishable Press. Every effort has been made to keep the presentation of the hacks clear and concise, assuming a working knowledge of the WordPress core. Although this list is intended as an internal resource, the techniques may prove beneficial to others, and thus are presented here as a general reference. Please don’t hesitate to ask if something isn’t entirely clear.

Customize the default more link

The default WordPress more link is produced when explicitly called via the <!--more--> quicktag, or whenever post excerpts are displayed instead of full post content. Depending on the context in which it is used, the more link generally reads something like, “Continue reading »”, and links to its own location in single view. Thus, when the more link is clicked, the browser displays the lower portion of the target article. Needless to say, I don’t really appreciate this behavior, so I hack the WordPress core to remove the “#more-$id” portion of the more link (located in wp-includes/post-template.php around line #124):

// change this:
$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "#more-$id\" class=\"more-link\">$more_link_text</a>";

// to this:
$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "\" class=\"more-link\">$more_link_text</a>";

Customize password-protected posts

I was having a hard time styling the default form markup for password-protected posts. Specifically, I needed some class attributes for some double-tuf CSS customization. Thus, I replaced the default password form code (located in wp-includes/post-template.php around line #485) with the following slab of PHP/(X)HTML goodness:

// customized form for password-protected posts
function get_the_password_form() {
	$output = '<form action="' . get_settings('siteurl') . '/wp-pass.php" method="post">
	<p>' . __("This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:") . '</p>
	<p><label class="h">' . __("Password: ") . ' </label><input class="postpassword" name="post_password" type="password" size="11" /><input class="passwordsubmit" type="submit" name="Submit" value="' . __("Submit »") . '" /></p>
	</form>
	<div class="clear"> </div>
	';
	return $output;
}

Customize default links for individual post-comment feeds

By default, WordPress generates a very basic link for individual post-comment links. You know the ones, after reading a post, you see a link that says something like, “Subscribe to comments on this post” or whatever. Well, that’s all fine and good for the average WordPress blogger, but I demand a bit more from my comment-feed links. Specifically, I wanted to nofollow the comment-feed links, and also add a nice descriptive title for usability purposes. Easy enough, just open up wp-includes/feed.php (around line #101), and throw down as follows:

// replace this default function
function comments_rss_link($link_text = 'Comments RSS', $commentsrssfilename = 'nolongerused') {
	$url = get_post_comments_feed_link();
	echo "<a href='$url'>$link_text</a>";
}

// with this customized version
function comments_rss_link($link_text = 'Comments RSS', $commentsrssfilename = 'nolongerused') {
	$url = get_post_comments_feed_link();
	echo "<a href=\"$url\" title=\"Subscribe to comments on this post via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">$link_text</a>";
}

Getting obsessive about source-code presentation, part 1

I am crazy about source code. I think it is poetry when well written, and art when it is well formatted. The formatting of the underlying source code of websites often leaves something to be desired, especially when it comes to sites powered by WordPress. In this hack, I add a couple of PHP tabs (\t\t) in order to get the newly implemented wlwmanifest link to line up with other elements in the document <head> (located in wp-includes/general-template.php around line #832):

// ocd is my best friend
function wlwmanifest_link() {
	echo "\t\t".'<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="'
		. get_bloginfo('wpurl') . '/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" /> ';
}

Getting obsessive about source-code presentation, part 2

Continuing from the previous argument, this hack produces properly aligned source code for 99% of post and comment content. Here at Perishable Press, content paragraphs and other post and comment elements are offset 5 tabs from the left edge of the browser window. Of course, the number of tabs may be changed to suit your particular needs. To use, open wp-includes/formatting.php (around line #71) and dig into the infamous wpautop formatting function as follows:

// replace this:
	$pee = preg_replace('/\n?(.+?)(?:\n\s*\n|\z)/s', "<p>$1</p>\n", $pee); // make paragraphs, including one at the end

// with this:
	$pee = preg_replace('/\n?(.+?)(?:\n\s*\n|\z)/s', "\t\t\t\t\t<p>$1</p>\n", $pee); // make paragraphs, including one at the end

Getting obsessive about source-code presentation, part 3

Another completely self-indulgent and format-obsessive core hack that I employ here at Perishable Press involves a simple edit to the wp-includes/bookmark-template.php file in order to get the markup output of my random blogroll links to appear in properly indented fashion. At around line 6, I add a series of tabs like so:

'show_images' => 1, 'before' => "\t\t\t\t\t\t".'<li>',

Enhance parse_url Functionality

File: wp-includes/functions.php (~ lines #508): insert "@" before parse_url and praise the Lord!

// $test = parse_url($link_test); 

$test = @parse_url($link_test);

Limit PHP memory for cache.php

This trick isn’t guaranteed to stop all PHP memory errors, but it certainly seems to help reduce their overall occurrence. For some reason, after my host upgraded their servers to Apache 1.3.41, I began logging an extremely high number of fatal PHP “memory exhausted” errors resulting from my WordPress cache.php file. After researching online and learning that I am not alone with this issue, I deployed a threefold defense strategy to eliminate future memory conflicts related to the now-infamous cache.php. First, open the file wp-includes/cache.php and place the following code immediately after the opening <?php tag:

ini_set('memory_limit','32M'); // set memory to prevent fatal errors

After that, create an htaccess file for the wp-includes directory and insert the following directive:

# set memory limit for cache.php
php_value memory_limit 32M

Finally, create a local php.ini file in the same directory (wp-includes) and insert this:

;; set memory limit for cache.php
memory_limit = 32M

And that’s it. Save, upload, test and check for additional errors. Like I said, it doesn’t always work, but it definitely seems to help reduce the overall volume of memory-related errors. To facilitate this part of the WordPress upgrade process, I have zipped a complete set of the three required files in their respective formats. Simply unzip, upload and done:

Customize quicktag buttons

Here, I have customized the set of defualt WordPress quicktags to accommodate my specific blogging requirements. To implement this hack, open up wp-includes/js/quicktags.js and replace the default set of quicktags (beginning ataround line #37) with the following (note: remove the empty spaces from the pre–code button):

// CUSTOM QUICKTAGS BEGIN HERE

edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_authent'
,'authenticate'
,'<!--authenticate-->'
,''
,''
);

edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_quotes'
,'quotes'
,'“'
,'”'
,''
);

edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_dash'
,'dash'
,'—'
,''
,''
);

edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_rsquo'
,'rsquo'
,'’'
,''
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_lsquo'
,'lsquo'
,'‘'
,''
,''
);

edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_acronym'
,'acronym'
,'<acronym title="">'
,'</acronym>'
,''
);

edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_clearspace'
,'clearspace'
,'<div class="clear vspace"> </div>'
,''
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_follow'
,'follow link'
,'<a href="" title="">'
,'</a>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_nofollow'
,'nofollow link'
,'<a href="http://" title="" rel="nofollow">'
,'</a>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_press-link'
,'press link'
,'<a href="https://perishablepress.com/" title="Perishable Press">'
,'</a>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_reflist'
,'ref list'
,'<h3 class="references"></h3>\n\t<ul class="refs">\n\t<li><sup>1</sup> <a href="http://" title=""></a></li>\n\t<li><sup>2</sup> <a href="http://" title=""></a></li>\n'
,'</ul>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_content-link'
,'content-link'
,'<a href="https://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/online/" title="Perishable Press">'
,'</a>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_press-image'
,'press image'
,'<img src="https://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/" title="" alt="" />'
,''
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_pre-code'
,'pre code'
,'< pre>< code>'
,'< /code>< /pre>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_sup'
,'sup'
,'<sup>'
,'</sup>'
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_quot'
,'quot'
,'"'
,''
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_<'
,'<'
,'<'
,''
,''
);
edButtons[edButtons.length] = new edButton('ed_>'
,'>'
,'>'
,''
,''
);

// CUSTOM QUICKTAGS END HERE

And that’s a wrap (for now). As discussed, this article serves as an ongoing core-hack reference for each and every WordPress upgrade executed here at Perishable Press, and is thus subject to change according to the file and code structure of future WP versions.

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Creative thinker. Passionate about free and open Web.