Description

Advanced Settings is a powerful WordPress plugin that provides settings you would expect to find in the WordPress core. It is lightweight, performant and offers a modern, fast and user-friendly interface.

🚀 PERFORMANCE
Advanced Settings 3 is optimized for extreme performance. It even loads only necessary PHP.
details in FAQ

🔒 SECURITY
Advanced Settings 3 has been independently reviewed for security vulnerabilities via Patchstack.
details in FAQ

✳️ INFO ABOUT BAD REVIEWS
2 bad reviews occurred in 2017 because outdated PHP versions were used, but can’t happen again.
details in FAQ

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FEATURES

🩷 FEATURE REQUESTS ARE WELCOME
Advanced Settings 3 was developed to help as many users as possible. If you’d like to see a feature added to this plugin, please let us know. Don’t worry, we’ll keep the plugin fast and lean; this is a high priority for us. We’ll only implement features that don’t conflict with this.

Dashboard

Customize dashboard logo
Hide WordPress update message in dashboard
Hide the top admin bar for all users in the frontend
Hide the welcome panel in the dashboard

System

Hide default WordPress favicon
Disable comment system
Disable posts auto saving
Prevent installation of new default WordPress themes during core updates
Disable email notifications for core updates
Disable email notifications for plugin updates
Disable email notifications for theme updates

Frontend

Disable author pages
Automatically add FavIcon (when favicon.ico, favicon.png or favicon.svg exists in template folder)
Automatically add description meta tag using blog description and post excerpt (SEO)
Remove WordPress generator meta tag
Remove RSD (Weblog Client Link) meta tag
Remove shortlink meta tag
Limit excerpt length
Add “Read more” link after excerpt
Remove wptexturize filter
Remove trackbacks and pingbacks from comment count
Compress HTML code
Remove HTML comments (except conditional IE comments)
Disable author pages
Add thumbnail support
Automatically generate post thumbnail (from first image in post)
Protect email addresses from spam bots
Add Facebook Open Graph meta tags
Disable emoji image replacement

Editing

Set JPEG quality
Downsize images on upload to max size

Developer

Display SQL queries and page load time

Configuration

Show/hide deprecated features
Show/hide experimental features
Configure tracking consent for feature usage statistics
Configure visibility of user guide

Contribute on github: github.com/eHtmlu/advanced-settings

Screenshots

Click on the icon in the admin bar to open the advanced settings
Search for the features you are looking for
Send a feature request if you are missing a feature

Installation

Upload the plugin to your WordPress plugins directory
Activate the plugin through the WordPress plugin menu
Go to Settings > Advanced in the WordPress admin menu
Use the tab navigation to access different settings sections
Configure your desired settings in each section

FAQ

Will the plugin become slower with more features?

Short answer:
No, due to the way the plugin is designed, it would still be just as fast even with thousands of features. Don’t worry, we don’t add thousands of features.

Detailed answer:
Advanced Settings 3 works as follows: Only when you open the plugin’s settings window does the plugin recognise which settings are actually available. When saving, only the activated settings are written to a separate cache file. Only this cache file is then taken into account during operation. This means that slowdowns can only occur due to active features. However, as some features deactivate WordPress functions, the plugin can actually make WordPress even faster than in the standard configuration.

How is the security of the plugin ensured?

Short answer:
The experienced plugin developer is additionally supported by the Patchstack community to ensure the security of the plugin.

Detailed answer:
The plugin is currently maintained by senior web developer Helmut Wandl, who has over 25 years of experience in web development. He is therefore familiar with various common security concepts for many years.

In addition, the plugin is monitored by the Patchstack community, and if security vulnerabilities are discovered, they are reported and fixed by the plugin developer immediately or as soon as possible, depending on the urgency.

How can I report security bugs?

You can report security bugs through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team helps validate, triage and handle any security vulnerabilities. Report a security vulnerability.

What caused the two bad ratings?

Short answer:
The bad ratings arose because a plugin update at the time no longer supported a very outdated PHP version, which unfortunately a few users were still using. However, due to a new WordPress feature, this cannot happen again.

Detailed answer:
The plugin developer at the time had decided in 2017 to use PHP features that were introduced with PHP 5.4. Support for the previous version, PHP 5.3, had already been officially discontinued by The PHP Group 3 years earlier. It was therefore natural to assume that all websites actually in use had already been converted to PHP 5.4 or newer. Unfortunately, this was not the case for a few of them.

Nowadays, you can specify in the plugin metadata which PHP version is required as a minimum for the plugin, so that users can only update the plugin if they are using the correct PHP version. While this WordPress feature came too late to prevent the problems and the negative reviews, this problem can fortunately be prevented in the future.

It would be great if you could contribute with your own review to ensure that the ratings reflect the current state of the plugin.

Reviews

MXPPPE April 10, 2025

Nice Plugin!

Anonymous User 15569536 August 4, 2017

I had to deactivate this plugin on a client’s website. The following error was observed. Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘[‘ in /advanced-settings/action-scripts.php on line 7. LINE “7”: $advset_removed_scripts = [];

moradpour September 3, 2016 1 reply

The risk of data loss

Read all 6 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Advanced Settings 3” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Translate “Advanced Settings 3” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

3.0.2 – 2025-06-04

Fixed order of features
Fixed a minor security issue in old code (rated as low priority by Patchstack)

3.0.1 – 2025-05-03

Fixed a critical bug that occurred with WordPress versions prior to 8.6
Fixed a settings loading error that occurred on WordPress installations that are not in the document root
Fixed an issue that disabled automatic updates of the plugin if it was active.
Code optimizations

3.0.0 – 2025-04-25

Complete redesign of admin interface with modern design
New React-based user interface
Improved performance through caching system
New modular organization of features and categories
Improved user guidance with interactive manual
Numerous code optimizations and bugfixes

2.10.0 – 2025-04-10

New feature to protect email addresses from spam bots (HTML entities & JavaScript)

2.9.0 – 2025-03-13

New feature to remove default WordPress favicon
New feature to prevent auto core update emails
New feature to prevent auto plugin update emails
New feature to prevent auto theme update emails
New config feature to show deprecated features (hidden by default)
New config feature to show experimental expert features (hidden by default)
Code optimizations

2.8.0 – 2025-03-10

Added “Config” tab with settings for the plugin itself
Performance optimizations

2.7.0 – 2025-03-10

Added support for SVG favicons in “Automatically add a FavIcon” setting
Fixed a few issues
Several code optimizations
Added tracking consent modal and tracking itself

2.6.0 – 2025-02-27

Changed navigation from multiple menu items to a single menu item with tab navigation
Marked a few settings as deprecated
Marked a few settings as experimental
Added “get in touch” notice
Tidied up a bit

2.5.0 – 2025-01-13

Add new feature: Disable author pages
Add new feature: Prevent installation of new default WordPress themes during core updates

2.4.0 – 2023-12-26

Updated code for WordPress version 6.4.2

2.3.4 – 2020-12-02

Updated code for WordPress version 5.5.3

2.3.3 – 2017-03-03

Add styles admin page
Filters admin page fix
New description

2.3.2 – 2017-03-02

Fixes for script actions & hooks

2.3.1 – 2017-02-25

Add scripts admin page

2.2.2 – 2016-07-15

Remove Trackbacks and Pingbacks from Comment Count
Add a Custom Dashboard Logo

2.2.1 – 2015-08-31

Fix delete posttype bug
Update plugin links
Add Git repository

2.2 – 2014-09-09

Fix migrate bug on update

2.1 – 2014-08-29

Fix update options bug
Remove unnecessary jQuery migrate script (jquery-migrate.min.js)
Include jQuery Google CDN instead local script (version 1.11.0)
Fix incorrect Facebook thumbnails including OG metas
Remove header RSD (Weblog Client Link) meta tag
Remove header shortlink meta tag
Fix delete link in post types admin page

2.0 – 2014-02-17

Organized admin menu creating new menu options

1.5.3

Disable The “Please Update Now” Message On WordPress Dashboard
Unregister default WordPress widgets
Remove widget system
The comment filter don’t remove conditional IE comments now

1.5.1

Actions/Filter admin page

1.5

Add auto post thumbnail
Add resize at upload
Add allow HTML in user profiles
Update form submit method (code)
pt_BR translation

1.4.6

Fix the “Remove comments system” bug

1.4.5

Increase the size of author thumbnail to 100px

1.4.4

Fix the “Insert author bio on each post”

1.4.3

Code compactor now skips the <pre> tag