I wrote a post last August 2009 on how to edit the Meta links in WordPress to remove the references to Entries RSS, Comments RSS, etc. in WordPress version 2.8.  The instructions for WordPress 3.0 version remain the same. The reason I am ‘bumping’ these instructions is because yesterday I came across conflicting and confusing advice being given on a couple of WordPress  resource sites.

The solution that works is to edit the default_widgets.php file which is in the wp-includes folder.

Firstly, I would recommend copying your existing default_widgets.php file to your hard drive, perhaps to your desktop; this is just in case you make a mistake and inadvertently delete too much – or the wrong – snippets of code!

Open up the default_widgets.php file with Notepad (or whatever other software you would normally use to edit php files).

Note that the example shown below is only to remove the references to the Entries RSS and Comments RSS.

Find the following lines in the default_widgets.php file:

<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” title=”<?php echo esc_attr(__(‘Syndicate this site using RSS 2.0′)); ?>”><?php _e(‘Entries <abbr title=”Really Simple Syndication”>RSS</abbr>’); ?></a></li>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>” title=”<?php echo esc_attr(__(‘The latest comments to all posts in RSS’)); ?>”><?php _e(‘Comments <abbr title=”Really Simple Syndication”>RSS</abbr>’); ?></a></li>

And delete them. Afterwards make sure that you save this edited default_widgets.php file, and upload it back into the wp-includes folder overwriting the original file.

If you want to also remove the reference to WordPress.Org, then you must also delete the following line:

<li><a href=”http://wordpress.org/” title=”<?php echo esc_attr(__(‘Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.’)); ?>”>WordPress.org</a></li>