Remove WordPress EditURI and wlwmanifest links

In the following simple solution, I show you how to remove wlwmanifest and EditURI links from the WordPress head section of your site or blog. You only need these if you plan to use Windows Live Writer to write to your WordPress blog. If you do not plan to use this Live Writer, you can safely remove these links. They are not used for any other purpose.

Removing these unnecessary header links from your website can also help to slightly reduce the size and load time of your posts and pages. All while potentially increasing SEO efforts by moving the more important content of your blog or site, upwards.

<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="https://yoursite/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />

<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="https://yoursite/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" />

  1. Login to your WordPress admin panel.
  2. Navigate to Appearance > Editor
  3. Click Theme Functions (functions.php) from the Theme Files section.
  4. Add the following code to the end of the file. Just before the closing ?> tag, if it exists.
    add_action('init', 'remheadlink');
    function remheadlink() {
    remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
    remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
    }
  5. Click the Update File Button and go view the source code of a page or post on your site.

That's all there is to it. Now if all went well, these links should now be gone from your WordPress Site's <head></head> section.