Lucid Green

If you have installed WordPress for a client, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have the Dashboard that greats them everytime they login display the latest posts from the WordPress development blog. It can even scare them when security updates are posted.

So why not change that feed to your own blog, maybe your business blog used to tell your clients about specials you are running?

It’s easy you only need to edit one the index.php file located in your /wp-admin/ directory. Visually that’s:

/wp-admin/
|
|–index.php

Step 1: Backup

As usual backup the file first. If you mess this file up you may not be able to login anymore. (relax it’s not that big of a deal, that’s why you make backups!)

Step 2: Edit the file.

Scroll down to line number 127, it’s near the bottom. The section looks like this:

<p><?php _e("Below is the latest news from the official WordPress development blog, click on a title to read the full entry. If you need help with WordPress please see our <a href='http://codex.wordpress.org/'>great documentation</a> or if that doesn't help visit the <a href='http://wordpress.org/support/'>support forums</a>."); ?></p>
<?php
$rss = @fetch_rss('http://wordpress.org/ development/feed/');
if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
?>
<h3><?php _e('WordPress Development Blog'); ?></h3>

Make the following edits:

• On line 129 by swap the URL there with the URL of your preferred blog’s feed.
• Delete line 127 or edit the text inside the parenthesis to remove or change the explanatory paragraph.
• Edit the text on line 132 inside the parenthesis to reflect the title of the blog that you are grabbing the feed from.
• Make sure that all the text you insert is inside quotation marks inside the parenthesis, like so (“…”). If you need to include quotation marks in your text be sure to escape them by putting a backslash in front of them, like so \”.

Here’s how I changed mine.

<p><?php _e("Below is the latest news from Lucid Green's customer support blog. If you need and assistance please don't hesitate to email support at <a href='mailto:help@lucidgreen.net'> help@lucidgreen.net.</a>"); ?></p>
<?php
$rss = @fetch_rss('http://www.lucidgreen.net /supportblog/?feed=rss2');
if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
?>
<h3><?php _e('Lucid Green customer support blog'); ?></h3>
<?php>

Save the file and your done!