How to remove The Wordpress Development Blog and Other Wordpress News feeds from your Wordpress dashboard

Tired of all that default news stuff that makes the default Wordpress Dashboard so slow to load? I sure was — it was taking 3 to 6 seconds for my Dashboard to load because of all the feeds. By removing the “Other News” and “Wordpress Development Blog,” feeds, my Dashboard now loads in between 0.13 and 0.20 seconds, and I’m a happy camper.

Part 1 shows you how to get rid of ALL the resource-hogging newsy stuff. Part 2 shows you how to keep just the Wordpress Development Blog’s most recent post (in case you want to do that).

[Note: I use Wordpress 2.0.4. Haven't tried other versions. This tested fine in Firefox 1.5.0.7 and IE 6; Validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Been using it myself for a week or so, no problems encountered whatsoever.]

Instructions – Part 1
You have to edit one of Wordpress’s core files here, but it’s a really simple edit. As long as you know how to edit a file in a text editor and upload it to your server, you can do it. All you have to do is comment out some of the code in the index.php file that resides in your wp-admin folder.

1) Go to your wp-admin folder and open index.php in your favorite text editor (Note: it’s always prudent to save a backup copy first!).

2) Scroll down to the following section of code, and “comment out” the entire block of html and, as suggested by Intgod, the php (the comment code you should add is in red):


<!--<p><?php /*_e("Below is the latest news from the official WordPress development blog, click on a title to read the full entry. If you need help with WordPress please see our <a href='http://codex.wordpress.org/'>great documentation</a> or if that doesn't help visit the <a href='http://wordpress.org/support/'>support forums</a>."); ?></p>
<?php
$rss = @fetch_rss('http://wordpress.org/development/feed/');
if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
?>
<h3><?php _e('WordPress Development Blog'); ?></h3>
<?php
$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 3);
foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
?>
<h4><a href='<?php echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']); ?>'><?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?></a> &#8212; <?php printf(__('%s ago'), human_time_diff(strtotime($item['pubdate'], time() ) ) ); ?></h4>
<p><?php echo $item['description']; ?></p>
<?php
}
}
?>
<?php
$rss = @fetch_rss('http://planet.wordpress.org/feed/');
if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
?>
<div id="planetnews">
<h3><?php _e('Other WordPress News'); ?> <a href="http://planet.wordpress.org/"><?php _e('more'); ?> &raquo;</a></h3>
<ul>
<?php
$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 20);
foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
?>
<li><a href='<?php echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']); ?>'><?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?></a></li>
<?php
}
?>
</ul>
</div>
< ?php
}
*/?>-->


3. Don’t mess with any of the other code. Leave it as it is. Save this new version of index.php to your wp-admin folder on your server, overwriting the old copy (you did save a backup of the original, right?).

4. Log into your Dashboard and enjoy the new clean look and über-fast loading time.

Ditch the “Other news,” but keep the most recent post in the “Wordpress Development Blog”.

If you want to keep the Wordpress Development Blog active but limit it to showing you only the first post (say, to stay abreast of any important developments) here is how you do it.

Instructions – part 2

You need to modify the same block of code as in part 1 above (don’t mess with any of the other stuff), but with two important changes:

1. Change the 3 to a 1 in the line below:


$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 3); <--- change this 3 to a 1

2. Leave the Wordpress Development Blog section intact and just comment out the “other news” code block instead.

Your final code should look like this (the edits are in red):


<p><?php _e("Below is the latest news from the official WordPress development blog, click on a title to read the full entry. If you need help with WordPress please see our <a href='http://codex.wordpress.org/'>great documentation</a> or if that doesn't help visit the <a href='http://wordpress.org/support/'>support forums</a>."); ?></p>
<?php
$rss = @fetch_rss('http://wordpress.org/development/feed/');
if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
?>
<h3><?php _e('WordPress Development Blog'); ?></h3>
<?php
$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 1 );
foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
?>
<h4><a href='<?php echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']); ?>'><?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?></a> &#8212; <?php printf(__('%s ago'), human_time_diff(strtotime($item['pubdate'], time() ) ) ); ?></h4>
<p><?php echo $item['description']; ?></p>
<?php
}
}
?>
<?php /*
$rss = @fetch_rss('http://planet.wordpress.org/feed/');
if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
?>
<div id="planetnews">
<h3><?php _e('Other WordPress News'); ?> <a href="http://planet.wordpress.org/"><?php _e('more'); ?> &raquo;</a></h3>
<ul>
<?php
$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 20);
foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
?>
<li><a href='<?php echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']); ?>'><?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?></a></li>
<?php
}
?>
</ul>
</div>
<?php
}
*/?>

There you have it! I hope it works for you as well as it’s worked for me. BTW, instead of commenting stuff out, you could probably just delete it. But if you’re feeling squeamish about editing Wordpress core files, it’s probably nice to know that you can easily restore things to normal by deleting the comments.

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