Well, I’ve used WordPress since version 1.1 (I think!), and I have found it easier and more sophisticated as it gets older. In addition, the number of plugins and themes has just exploded! It’s quite exciting… But one thing has always puzzled me… why do I have to have the DashBoard Feeds at all. I successfully managed to get rid of them in version 2.0, but every time I reinstall, there they are! Laughing back at me, mocking me!

Perhaps you, too, run a website using WordPress that really isn’t so appropriate for some of the feeds’ news content! Perhaps it’s a personal site, perhaps commercial grade, perhaps… Anyway, I didn’t know what to do…

That was until I found a plugin by Michael Shadle that does the job nicely…

A No-hack Dashboard Removal Plugin

I don’t know why this wasn’t discovered (or a better action put in by the WP folks to begin with that could be disabled) but I was able to find a way to disable the feeds from loading on the WordPress admin dashboard without any need for customized index.php files (which would need to be updated/re-uploaded every time WP is updated.)

If you find the Wordpress Dashboard Feeds handy, then fine. But if you don’t, you should check this plugin out! It cleans them out just fine! I did find the code before, but this time it’s just easier to do with a plugin! Nice and clean… I did try another plugin, but couldn’t get any results with that… This one just worked once when activated.

See….

Thanks, Michael. I’ll use it!

I came across this interesting website that encourages visitors to clean up their CSS. The website tells the story of how it came about, nothing exceptional there.

Anway, in their words, “CleanCSS is a powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.”

Anyway, you open your blog, find your Style Sheet for the theme you are using, copy the text and paste it into the block on the left on their website. You’ll find your CSS code in the Theme Editor under ‘Presentation’.

As a precaution, save the original file in a text file, so you can paste it back should things go wrong (and they do! So be warned!).

Anyway, I took the original code for the MistyLook Theme, and pasted it in, chose the options on the right, and voila…. This is what I got!

OK. Now, I’m going to try the new CSS in just a moment! I’ll post a screen shot. I don’t know if the result will speed up the website any, as it only saved a little over 2K. Last time I checked an average page on this blog was clocking in at a little over 750KB. Mmm.. I chose some options that made it a little less readable for humans than normal… Still, we’ll see. OK. It looks fine. I’ll monitor it over the next few days. But like I said, make sure you have a backup just in case things go wrong!

Warning: Any changes that you can’t undo are your own responsibility! If you’re not sure of modifying your blog, then you shouldn’t. If you decide to go ahead, back up everything at least ONCE, and preferably several times, so you can have something that works!