Earlier this week I posted a tentative review of Automattic’s new Wordpress.com Stats plugin available for all Wordpress blogs. Now, as a follow-up, I offer a guide to ridding one’s blog of the Smiley Face (read: frustration and, somewhat, freaked-out-edness).
The Story
My friend Cory and I were throwing ideas back and forth on a Wordpress theme when he directed my attention to the footer of the page.
“Did you put a smiley face down there?” asked Cory.
“Um. No.” said I.
“Are you sure?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Well there’s definitely a smiley face down there.”
“Yeah. Looks like it.”
…
“That’s pretty freaky man.”
The Explanation
First I checked the theme’s footer.php. Nothing in the source. Then I checked the HTML via a View Source of the page. No go. There wasn’t a single sign of the little bugger anywhere.
I changed themes. It was still there.
Then it hit me. Plugins. What plugins had I installed that could bring about something so…so…evil.
Wordpress.com Stats!
Now, to be fair, it’s understandable that they would need to drop in a gif to track the stats on a blog. I get that. And I suppose it was also my fault for not checking the README before installing or playing with the plugin…but…um…uh…
Where was I going with this again?
The “So What”
Check the README for information on how exactly to get rid of that smiley face. Don’t set the image display to none, as that will hurt the stat tracking. The exact CSS to use is in the documentation for the plugin.
Of course, I would still suggest ditching the plugin because it isn’t locally hosted. If you’re going to branch out for stats anyway, check out how to use Google Analytics on your Wordpress blog. Trust me, it’s better.
3 Comments
Hey! Samething here… I use the Wordpress.com Stats system. It disappeared for now. But at a time, there certainly was a small weird smiley face thing. I have no idea what it was. Perhaps, if may come back.
Weird…
http://feedelite.com/
This little guy has been following me around, I first noticed him on my site, then most of the blogs I have been to recently. I thought he was some kind of smiley stalker.
Thanks for working it out and posting.
Really bothered me for a while this little fella. I had drawn the same conclusions that it was a plugin causing it, after checking the theme code and source. Just glad it’s nothing malicious!
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