WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover Plugin
When you install the WordPress.com Stats plugin from WordPress it adds a small, simple graphic to your posts which looks like a small smiley face. Generally it’s located in the footer of your theme but no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to find it (or remove it) from the code.
Why?
The smiley face is actually being loaded through a series of JavaScript calls from a remote server, the graphic isn’t actually located on your website at all! It’s part of the WordPress.com Stats plugin and is designed to help track visitors to your website but … it’s kinda ugly and a pain in the ass so to get rid of it all you need to do is add some code to your header.php file. Specifically, open your style.css file and add the following CSS:
[source lang="css"]img#wpstats{display:none;}[/source]
If you’re absolutely petrified of opening and editing your CSS files directly you can either pay a WordPress expert to do it for you (that’s the choice that my wife always prefers) or you can download my simple plugin which can be uploaded to your website and activated, automatically adding the code to the proper place.
How to Install
- Download the plugin
- Log into your WordPress Admin (http://[yourwebsite]/wp-admin
- Surf to Plugins -> Add New
- Select the ZIP file and Install Now
- Activate the Plugin
For those of you who would like to know more about the Smiley Face frustrustration, Ryan Imel wrote a great piece on it a while back and there’s also a great piece on My Digital Life.
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How You Can Help
I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.
Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.
thanks! i did not know about word press. Its a new technique and it is very helpful for the designers. It is a tool that is useful for many feautres.
its nice for loving wordpress. i am trying this.
thx a lot for future update.
This plugin is good for busy people, that like to change theme frequently.
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Works great, thank you
Wow, I had no idea about the fact that that was remotely hosted.
I’m surprised that more people haven’t got uptight about the privacy concerns that an issue like this should raise!
Doing what you’re doing here is only hiding the image from view though, not removing the call to the remote server.
But I guess if you’re giving over your stat tracking to an external entity, this is the price you pay.
This is definitely good for that are extremely busy. I know I am.
Thanks! That’s a great help on my own website, I couldn’t figure out where to edit the code but this plugin made it really easy.
I’ve never seen this smiley face you speak of…
I haven’t really noticed the smiley face but I will look for it now!
Great Article, Thank you very much
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I am facing the problem of the smiley face from the Stats plugin. I have trying to use your plugin to remove it, but failed, it still bring my side bar after the contents. Please try to help me on this. You can try to click any of the post from the dTree Categories for my blog at : http://bf-1.com/BF1Blog/ then you may understand what i said. Thank you so much if you can help me up on this.
Hi…! This rocks. You rock. Thank you for sharing and helping people out. I send you a virtual beer :)