Remove Unwanted Links and Tags From WordPress Head

This removes those extra ‘rel’ links that WordPress inserts into wp_head. It also removes the WP generator tag. Removing some of these are useful for keeping your site more secure (for example, the Edit Uri link). Removing all of these makes your pages load faster.

There is nothing you will miss here. I don’t touch the ‘canonical’ link, nor the “shortlink”, because those are useful for traffic to your site. The “canonical” lets Google know your page is the original source, and the “shortlink” allows your page to be shared far and wide in feeds like Twitter. So, drop the whole chunk below into your functions to get rid of useless clutter.

// remove rel="EditURI" link. USEFUL TO REMOVE THIS FOR SECURITY.
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' );

// remove the link rel="wlwmanifest"
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' ); 

// remove the meta generator WP version tag
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' );

// remove both link rel="prev" and link rel="next"
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0 );

// remove the link rel="alternate" feed links for regular posts fee and comments feed
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links', 2 ); 

// Remove links to the extra feeds (e.g. category feeds)
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3 );