Here are three functions.php edits I use on every single new wordpress install:

Custom Login Screen – 4 lines of code

With three lines of code you can customize your login screen with your logo.  Easy peasy. Upload your logo to your themes directory — change the file name — and wala.  Good to go.

function my_custom_login_logo() {
  echo '<style type="text/css">h1 a { background-image:url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/yourlogo.jpg) !important; }</style>';
   }
add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login_logo');

Remove wordpress update notice – 5 lines of code

I don’t want my end users seeing the wordpress update notice when they login.  I see it … that’s enough.  I don’t need emails from them telling me about it :)

add_action('admin_menu','bhhidenag');
function bhhidenag()
{
remove_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );
 }

Remove all those extra links in the header – 9 lines of code (max)

Most of my wordpress sites aren’t blogs … and so I remove a lot of the bloggy links from the header.  You can pick and choose which ones you want to leave.  I never include the generator line because that just announces to the world what version of WP your site is running … “hello hackers, try to exploit me with my known bugs”.  LOL

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3 ); // extra feeds such as category feeds
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links', 2 ); // general feeds: Post and Comment Feed
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' ); // Really Simple Discovery service endpoint, EditURI link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' ); // Windows Live Writer manifest file.
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'index_rel_link' ); // index link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'parent_post_rel_link', 10, 0 ); // prev link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link', 10, 0 ); // start link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link', 10, 0 ); // relational links for the posts adjacent to the current post.
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' ); // WP version

It’s a little hard right now to imagine life without Grampy. He and Grandmother have always … been there. At every birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, July 4th, and other random holidays … every band concert, church play, graduation, wedding, every moving day. And on so many other days in between … Grampy has been a constant presence and influence in my life.

When I was a little girl, I spent many many nights down at Grandmother and Grampy’s. One of my favorite activities was playing hair dresser. With Grampy. As only a grandfather would do … he let me put rollers in his hair. Maybe that’s why his hair was always so wavy – from the years of rollers I put on him as a child! We would also have story time where Grampy would make up stories as he went along … he would finish telling a story and I would ask “and then what happens??” He would think a few seconds, and then make up the next part of the story.

I’ve spent the night at Grandmother and Grampy’s every single Christmas Eve of my life … even after I got married. That was part of the deal when Steve married me – you marry me, you get to spend the night down there. (and I think he enjoys it just as much as I do!) My brother and I were both in our late twenties before they stopped getting up in the middle of the night to play Santa and fill the stockings. We all have special places to sit on Christmas morning … mine has always been on the floor, in front of Grampy (a prime spot for Mark to throw things at).

When Steve and I bought our first house in Nashville, we were a bit overwhelmed by the 3 acres of land the house was on. So Grandmother and Grampy came out and helped us figure out what to do with it – and they worked out in the yard with us – probably harder than we did! Grampy always came prepared to help us with whatever project we were working on at the time.

When Mom and Dad moved a few years ago, Grampy and I spent a whole day steaming and peeling some very stubborn hideous pink flowered wallpaper off one of the bedrooms. And we had fun doing it… just laughing and talking all day.

Grampy’s brother, Jasper, lives up in Chicago and hasn’t been well enough to travel for the past few years. Last year, we setup a webcam on Grandmother’s computer and since then just about every other weekend, my 90 year old Grampy and his 95 year old brother would video-chat on skype. It took about 10 minutes to setup … but Grampy – well – he was just so thankful and couldn’t believe something like that was possible and free! For weeks afterward, he mentioned it every time we talked. He was so appreciative of everything anyone did for him. No matter how small.

So many lunches, dinners and homemade ice-cream gatherings down at their house … every single one beginning with prayer. Grampy’s faith was a visible thing to everyone who knew him. He lived out his faith every day in word and deed. He was a leader in his church and his community, he helped those who needed it… he encouraged those around him…

I have learned so many things from Grampy. He has instilled what I’ll call some core values:

Integrity / Respect – Everyone respected Grampy. To know him – was to love and respect him. Last night during visitation, so many people said how much they respected Grampy and what a fine man man he was. He lived a life full of honesty and integrity. He wasn’t afraid to admit when he was wrong and he would tell the truth … even when telling the truth was hard.

Time – Grampy always had time for us. Clearly shown by his presence in practically every important moment of our lives. But he was also there for the “unimportant” moments — lazy Saturday afternoons just sitting around talking. Summer mornings breaking beans. Planting trees in their yard last November. Just chatting on the phone about nothing. A lot of evenings I call and talk to Grandmother and Grampy during my commute home – from the time I pulled out of the garage at my office to the time I pulled in my garage at home. We would talk about work, church, school, how all our plants were doing in the garden … anything and everything. It was all important to him.

Wisdom – Like my Dad, Grampy was one of those men who always knew what the right thing was to do (and how to fix pretty much anything that broke!) How blessed our family has been to have such strong men of faith and character in our lives.

Laughter – I think Mark and I got much of our sense of humor and fun from Grampy. He was always telling jokes, pulling pranks… he knew how to have fun in life… how to appreciate the good and move past the bad.

Power – as in … power tools. When Mark and I were kids, Grampy had us out in the garage with him learning how to use jigsaws, belt sanders and drill presses. We were always building things. Driving tractors. He taught me not to be afraid of trying anything.

Love – Grampy loved my Grandmother with all that he was throughout their 66 years of marriage. He never forgot birthdays or anniversaries – and made the effort to show how much he loved her. In the last few months … he always wanted her close. Sunday morning, grandmother and I were in the kitchen talking and she said that Grampy had said recently “you do so much for me … you take such good care of me … how can I show you how much I love you?” — and that she asked him if she remembered their wedding vows from 66 years ago… “caring for each other in sickness and in health”. They exemplified the best of a loving christian marriage. Loving each other, loving their family, loving God and serving Him, building a life together, having fun with each other … being each others best friend.

Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is more desirable than great riches”. Grampy. What a good name. I am privileged to share Grampy’s last name as my first name – Lacy. What an honor to carry that good name… I hope I can be half as strong of character and faith as he was.

Thank you for being here with us today as we celebrate Grampy’s life and the incredible legacy he has left behind. A legacy of kindness and humility, of serving God and his community… a legacy of love and devotion to his family.

(View photos)

• Tracking how effective specific ads (some regular ol’ plain text links too) were. We have a flash ad rotation on several of our sites … and I wanted to know how many people were clicking on what specific ads to get to other sections of the site. I wanted to know more than just “they came from the homepage”.  I wanted to know – did they click on the Antarctica ad or the New Zealand ad?  Did they click on the text link in the navigation?
• Tracking outbound links to our social medial pages … we wanted to see how many people ended up on our facebook page through what specific ads and promotions.

Both of these require a little manual effort – you have to create specific links to gather specific data.

For the first — Google calls this CAMPAIGN tracking. As in—an ad campaign.  Makes sense :)

There are three things I’m keeping track of with this:

• Campaign Source (utm_source): to identify a search engine, newsletter name, or other source where your ad is going to be seen (if you have an ad in an email – you’d put the name of email here)
• Campaign Medium (utm_medium): to identify a medium such as email or cost-per- click. What type of ad is it? Banner ad, text link, or a link from an e-mail?
• Campaign Name (utm_campaign): to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign. What promotion is this ad part of? Free shipping?

You can use Google’s URL builder here – or of course you can manually create your links. Once you know the format – it’s just as easy to do your own.

So for instance, let’s say I had an ad for football tickets that I placed in an email newsletter.  The URL to the event was:

a href=”http://www.mydomain.com/sportingevent.html”

In order to track the data for that specific URL –  I would change that link used in the email newsletter to be something like this:

a href=”http://www.mydomain.com/sportingevent.html?utm_source=july2009newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=VUfootball09262009″

To view your analytics for these links:

1. Login to Google Analytics
2. In the left side-bar, select Traffic Sources.
3. Then click on Campaigns.
4. Select the Campaign Name you want to track. This is the Campaign Name you designated when tagging the ad URL above.

For the second – tracking our outbound links, we’re going to do a little javascript-ery-trickery to get what we want.

Without this – it’s pretty much impossible to track how people are getting to our social media sites. Those sites don’t live on our servers – so we can’t put the GA code on them.  We could track how many people click on a link on a specific page on our servers – but that gets kind of clunky tracking-wise.

So – what’s the best way to track which external links are popular with your site visitors?

(There is a javascript “addon” that will track this information (available here) — it will track external links and file downloads. Simply install the code right above the GA code on all your pages – and wala. You don’t have to manually edit each link.)

Here is how I prefer to track this information.

Our link starts out like this:

a href=”http://www.externalwebsiteurl.com/”

To track it … we’ll turn it into this:

a href=”http://www.externalwebsiteurl.com” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/externalwebsiteurl.com‘);”

(you could make outgoing anything you want … but decide on a standard so that you can easily pull this data)

Exposition on James Sanborn’s Cyrillic Projector – a cryptography sculpture on the University of North Carolina Charlotte campus.

RULES: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random/interesting things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. (To do this, go to “write note” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people, then click publish.)
1. I can’t parallel park.
2. When we moved from Washington, D.C. to Nashville – our furniture was stolen by the moving company. (The FBI found most of our furniture in Pennsylvania a few months later… Goodbye air mattresses we had been sleeping on! Needless to say … we don’t trust movers anymore.)
3. I *love* to read … am always reading something… and LOVE the Nashville Library system.
4. I like pizza without tomato sauce.
5. I married a Brit .. who would want me to clarify that further – an English Brit :P I feel lucky to be married to my best friend … and love that we still have fun together after 8 years of marriage :) 
6. I’ve spent the night on every Christmas Eve of my entire life at my grandparents house.
7. My undergrad degree is in Biochem.
8. I spent a summer during college in Ecuador doing medical missions … changed my worldview forever.
9. I love brussel sprouts.
10. Laundry is my least favorite chore… I think our clothes multiply in the washer and dryer!
11. I have really vivid dreams / nightmares… and can’t ever watch scary movies.
12. I don’t like voicemail or talking on the phone.
13. We have a siberian husky, MacGyver Jack … he’s solid white with ice-blue eyes. Mac has two vacation homes – my parents and Tracys. (and he’s named after two Richard Dean Anderson characters — MacGyver, obviously, and Jack from Stargate!)
14. My name – Lacy – is my mother’s maiden name. My middle name – Marie – is the same middle name of every woman in my family (maternal side) for generations.
15. I don’t watch any reality television at all. 
16. I’ve played piano since I was in 2nd grade…. and now playing is a way to relax. I can’t play by ear … and have always been amazed at people who can!
17. I’d like to be a mom sooner rather than later. 
18. My first instinct is to say “yes”. I’ve had to learn how to say no … but I feel like if you are able to do something for someone, do it; we’re all blessed with something we can give back – time, talents, etc. 
19. Love PETROS … and used to go to the one in Hamilton Place every time we were in Chattanooga. Now there are only a few Petros open – and none of them convenient. 
20. I broke my nose when I was a little girl – I was watching Captain Kangaroo and jumping back and forth over my brothers legs. It ended badly on the edge of a table … 
21. I played piccolo in my high school marching band … best instrument ever for marching band ;) Now I wonder how I ever memorized a whole marching band show … 
22. Love the movie Pride and Prejudice (Not the recent remake – the real one.) There is only one Mr. Darcy … Colin Firth.
23. Love Ghengis Grill … the art of the perfect bowl. 
24. I’m inexplicably drawn to introverted people.
25. I love arranging flowers… especially with my flower buddy Jill :)

“This portable style is the very last manual typewriter in production today. No power required! 44 keys w/ 88 symbols, one ribbon included that types both black & red ink and that oh so satisfying clickety-clack of the keys.”

Oh how I LOVE typewriters. When I was growing up, my grandmother had a REALLY old typewriter in her back room. I would go in there every time I was down there, put a sheet of my school paper in the type writer, roll it up to the first line, and start typing a note to someone (usually my best friend, Karen – who I think still has some of these notes!)  These notes were usually totally meaningless … but I can recall many of them where I would be heartbroken – or insanely happy – but most of them weren’t memorable notes. But I do remember loving using the typewriter.  It made everything seem … more.  More important.  More dramatic.  Just … MORE!

Even then, I loved the neatness of the typed note.  The ability to have RED words.  Double spacing.  It was just cool. And click clack I would go.  Then — I’d roll out the paper — and do the only thing a girl could do with a note then — fold it into an intricate almost origami-like piece of beauty. You had to fold it just right too … so that the little corner stuck out from the last folded edge – so your friend could easily unfold it.  

I think I’m too cheap to spend $125 on this typewriter … but my grandmother still has that old typewriter at her house.  Over Christmas, I may just have to sit down and type a letter to Karen for old time’s sake!