Wordpress > Removing Links from Meta Widget

Since this issue comes up at least once a day if not more in the support forums, I’ve decided to create an entry about it so I can stop repeating it.

If you want to keep the Meta Widget but remove some of the links to it, here is how (note that post is in relation to Wordpress 2.8.1 but will also work for 2.8)**:

Files to Edit: wp-includes/default_widgets.php

1. Open default_widgets.php and find this section (~ line 273):

/**
 * Meta widget class
 *
 * Displays log in/out, RSS feed links, etc.
 *
 * @since 2.8.0
 */

2. Now scroll down and find this:

<ul>
<?php wp_register(); ?>
	<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>

	<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php echo esc_attr(__('Syndicate this site using RSS 2.0')); ?>"><?php _e('Entries <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>

	<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php echo esc_attr(__('The latest comments to all posts in RSS')); ?>"><?php _e('Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>

	<li><a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="<?php echo esc_attr(__('Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.')); ?>">WordPress.org</a></li>

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

3. Delete the links you don’t want!

 
And, guess what, when you upgrade your Wordpress installation, you’ll have to do this all over again. Yay!

**If you’re using a version of Wordpress prior to 2.8, you’ll find similar code in the wp-includes/widget.php file and these instructions are the same.