21-Jan-2013 : Get rid of the WordPress ‘Howdy’ greeting

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I know there’s a plugin which will get rid of that irritating ‘Howdy’ greeting but here’s a simple snippet of PHP which will do the same thing.

Make sure you know where your theme’s functions.php file is stored: it will be somewhere like /public_html/wp/wp-content/themes/theme_name/functions. Make sure you know how to replace this file manually, either via your site’s cPanel or by ftp.

Go Appearance > Editor and select functions.php. Before you go any further, make a backup of this file by copying & pasting the contents into a text file somewhere on your computer or, if you’re connected via cPanel, make a copy of it in a different subdirectory.  If you make a mistake and your site refuses to load, you will have to restore it.

Scroll to the bottom of the file and identify the last curly bracket ‘}‘ and the PHP close tag ‘?>‘.

Paste the following code after the }‘ and before the ?>:-

// replace WordPress ‘Howdy’ – this is a comment

  function replace_howdy( $wp_admin_bar ) {
    $my_account=$wp_admin_bar->get_node(‘my-account’);
    $newtitle = str_replace( ‘Howdy,’, ‘Welcome’, $my_account->title );
    $wp_admin_bar->add_node( array( ‘id’ => ‘my-account’, ‘title’ => $newtitle, ) );
  }

 add_filter( ‘admin_bar_menu’, ‘replace_howdy’,25 );

Click Update File. Your site will now say ‘Welcome’ instead of ‘Howdy’.

Notes:-

(i) Your theme may store the functions.php file in a different location, so you may need to go and look for it.

(ii) Your editor may not give you access to the functions.php file from the WordPress Dashboard, If this is the case, you will need to edit it via cPanel, or download it via ftp, edit it locally, then re-upload it.

(iii) The functions.php file will probably be replaced if you update or reinstall WordPress or your chosen theme. If this happens, you will need to re-apply this patch.