Essentials to customize Wordpress via simple settings, SMTP, title highlight, category selection, more separator, sticky posts, remove clutter, ...

Customize your Wordpress website even more to your needs via simple admin settings instead of code modifications.

Setting up new websites from time to time I realized, that I keep using similar sets of modifications over and over again. This plugin gives you a wide range of modifications at hand without any core or theme code changes - making them persistent across updates or switching to another theme.

th23 Specials core features include (all available as options in admin dashboard):

• Mail sending via SMTP server instead of default PHP mail function - and with custom subject prefix
• Revision and edit restrictions for posts and pages
• Highlighting in titles of posts and pages - for custom styling via theme
• Category selection via radio button, forcing single category assignment and option to restrict available categories - via Classic and Gutenberg / Block editor
• Excerpts for pages
• Sticky posts also sticky on archive pages
• Disabling author links and archives
• Enforcing usage of more tag / block / separator in posts and pages - preventing too long full text display on home and overview pages
• Disable various headers - core version info, links, jQuery Migrate, inline CSS, emojis, oEmbed, legacy contact options

For a manual installation upload extracted th23-specials folder to your wp-content/plugins directory.

The plugin is configured via its settings page in the admin area. Find all options under Settings -> th23 Specials. The options come with a description of the setting and its behavior directly next to the respective settings field.

Simply install plugin and choose customizations required from the plugin settings page. Few options involve further actions to achieve required result - see below and FAQ section for more details.

For highlighting in post / page titles, put part to highlight in between *matching stars* in the editor. This part will be enclosed by <span></span> tags in the HTML on the frontend, allowing styling by theme via the CSS selector .entry-title span.

A: Yes, there are links in the descriptions on the th23 Specials settings page, next to the respective option to search for "non-compliant" posts / pages.

Upon a click on this link you will see all currently non-compliant posts / pages. You can modify these by clicking on their titles, which loads them into your default editor.

A: This might be happening as some options can be "overruled" by settings by your theme. For settings that might be affected, please see the description on the settings page.

To change such settings, please check your active theme and adjust them there, if required.

Feel free to raise issues or contribute code for improvements via GitHub.

You are free to use this code in your projects as per the GNU General Public License v3.0. References to this repository are of course very welcome in return for my work 😉