Custom WordPress Installation

by Teli Adlam

I install WordPress a lot. Unfortunately, there are some things that I don’t care for with the current WordPress default installation files.

When you’re doing one or two installations every so often, it’s no big, but for me it saves more time to tweak the installation files once so that I don’t need to worry about tweaking it on the backend later.

What are these tweaks?

• Custom admin username, admin display name, blog description, default category, and blog URL (I have a tendency of installing the WordPress files in their own directory separate from the blog’s home page)
• I’ve never been a huge fan of the phone home feature, so I’ve removed the blog address when checking for updates
• Although security by obscurity isn’t the greatest security defense, I still don’t feel comfortable advertising my blogging software and version, hence the WP generators have been removed from the head/RSS meta completely
• The default links and post/page/comment have been omitted because, frankly, I get tired of manually deleting them from every new installation
• Since the autosave/revision feature is overkill and DB bloat in most of my cases, I’ve added a line to the wp-config-sample.php file to disable it by default (of course, this only applies to installations that don’t already have an existing wp-config.php file handy)

Normally I don’t release these tweaks since they’re for my own personal use, but this time around, I figured why not?

Before downloading and using these WordPress files, please make sure you’re alright with the above—if not, don’t use them. Also, these files come with no warranties or guarantees—i.e. use at your own risk. If your server blows up or catches fire (highly unlikely), you’re on your own.

Without further ado, here you go: WordPress 2.8 Custom

Also, when you’re done with the installation it’s important that you delete or rename your install.php and upgrade.php files.