Calvin’s Hub

You finally have your own self-hosted Wordpress blog up and running with the custom theme that you want. One thing’s bothering you though is the Meta section on your sidebar with the Register and Login link. You’d rather remove it to save space on your sidebar but you can’t find it in the Widgets page to disable.

Some custom themes doesn’t include the Meta widget but instead, it is hard-coded on the theme itself. It’s not that hard to remove it though. Here’s how:

1. Login to your admin page (http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin).

2. Go to Design > Theme Editor

3. Select sidebar.php from the right side, under Templates.

4. On the code, you will see something like this (might slightly vary between themes):

<?php endif; ?>

<li><h2><?php _e(’Meta’); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_register(); ?>
<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
<li><a href=”http://validator.w3.org/check/referer” title=”This page validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional”><?php _e(’Valid’); ?> <abbr title=”eXtensible HyperText Markup Language”>XHTML</abbr></a></li>
<li><a href=”http://gmpg.org/xfn/”><abbr title=”XHTML Friends Network”>XFN</abbr></a></li>
<li><a href=”http://wordpress.org/” title=”Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.”>WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href=”http://www.wpdesigner.com/” title=”Theme by WPDesigner”>WPDesigner</a></li>

<?php wp_meta(); ?>
</ul>
</li>

</ul>
</div>

<!– End Sidebar –>

5. All you need to do is delete starting from <li><h2><?php_e(’Meta’);?> until the last </li>.

6. Save your changes and view your site again.

If you can’t save your changes, you need to make the file writable first. You can do it from your host’s cpanel. Or you can just edit the file from there.

That’s it! You just deleted the Meta section from your site. It’s not that important anyway and you can use that space for something more important..

• Use Wordpress.com’s RSS Widget to promote your other sites
• Google really loves Wordpress.com Blogs
• Adding avatars on a Digg 3-column theme for Wordpress
• Search for the Philippine’s 10 Best Humor Blogs 2008

Filed under: Blogging Experience, Tips n' Trix