This page provides a detailed guide to all Clearfy Pro settings, organized by tab.
Video walkthrough of all settings:
[omnivideo title=”” youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EenYGrdOQ6Y” rutube=”https://rutube.ru/video/fb19b066725f3723101727c411914bc6/?r=plwd” vk=”https://vkvideo.ru/video-137277177_456239056″ poster=”auto” dzen=”https://dzen.ru/embed/vfxW6Z1uRpBQ”]
Code
Disable JSON REST API
WordPress 4.4 introduced the REST API, which allows external systems to interact with your site. It also exposes /wp-json/ endpoints that search engines can index—potentially creating tens of thousands of unnecessary indexed pages. Beyond that, the REST API can reveal user data and accept things l
Disable Emoji Script
By default, WordPress converts emoji characters into images using JavaScript and external resources. This feature was introduced back in 2015, when many browsers couldn’t render emoji natively. It works by replacing emoji with images hosted on s.w.org.
These days, virtually all browsers support emoji out of the box, so this extra script is unnecessary. Disabling it will help you keep your page code cleaner and reduce external HTTP requests.
Remove dns-prefetch
Starting with WordPress 4.6.1, dns-prefetch lin
Remove jquery-migrate.min.js
The jquery-migrate.min.js script exists to ensure backward compatibility with older jQuery code. If you’re running a modern version of WordPress along with up-to-date themes and plugins, you don’t need this script at all. It’s safe—and recommended—to disable it for better performance.
If you’re using an older theme or plugins that haven’t been updated in years, you can still disable it—but make sure to test your site afterwards to confirm everything works correctly.
Remove RSD Link
RSD (Really Simple Discovery) is an XML format that enables external apps to connect and publish to your WordPress site. If you’re not using external blogging tools (which most sites don’t), you can safely remove this link from your site’s header.
If the link doesn’t disappear after enabling this option, check your theme’s header.php file—it might be hard-coded there, in which case you’ll need to remove it manually.
Remove WLW Manifest Link
This link is used by the old Windows Live Writer app to enable remote publishing to your site. If you’re not using Windows Live Writer (which most people aren’t), you can safely disable this link to keep your site’s header cleaner.
If the link remains after enabling this option, check your theme’s header.php file—it may be hard-coded there and will need to be removed manually.
Remove Shortlink /?p=
By default, WordPress generates a shortlink for each post in the format /?p=POST_ID. These duplicate your main URLs and can sometimes get indexed by search engines, leading to unnecessary duplicate content.
It’s usually best to remove these shortlinks for cleaner code and better SEO. If the shortlink tag doesn’t disappear after enabling this option, check your theme’s header.php—you may need to remove it manually if it’s hard-coded.
Remove Next/Previous Post Links
These links add <link rel="next"> and <link rel="prev"> tags in your site’s <head> section, meant for paginated archives. WordPress removed them from the core in version 5.6. If you’re running an older version of WordPress for some reason, it’s usually a good idea to remove them—they don’t provide much value and can clutter your site’s header.
Remove .recentcomments Inline Styles
By default, WordPress injects inline CSS for the “Recent Comments” widget that uses !important, making it hard to override. Most modern themes already include appropriate styles for comments, so these extra inline styles are unnecessary. Disabling them helps keep your site’s code cleaner and easier to maintain.
Code in <head>
Use this section to insert custom code into your site’s <head>. It’s perfect for things like Google or Bing verification tags, retargeting pixels, JavaScript widgets, or any snippet that explicitly needs to load in the header.
This option is convenient because it doesn’t require editing your theme files directly, so your code won’t be lost after theme updates.
Added via the wp_head hook.
Code Before </body>
Add code here that you want to output right before the closing </body> tag. This is typically where you place analytics scripts, tracking pixels, retargeting code, or other JavaScript that needs to load at the end of the page.
Injected using the wp_footer hook.
HTML Minification
Minification removes unnecessary characters from your site’s HTML to reduce page size. This includes spaces, tabs, and line breaks—helping you shave 20–30% off your page weight and improve PageSpeed scores.
What’s left untouched:
- Whitespace and line breaks in JavaScript (to avoid breaking scripts)
- HTML comments (since some tracking or ad scripts depend on them)
- Conditional tags for Internet Explorer
- Contents of <textarea>, <pre>, and <script> tags
If you need to exclude a specific block from minification, wrap it with <!--dont minify--> comments.
Note: If you’re using a caching plugin, be sure to clear your cache after enabling this option so your changes take effect.
SEO Settings
Enable Last-Modified Header
This option sets the Last-Modified header based on the last update of a post. If newer comments exist, it uses the date of the most recent one.
For archive pages (like categories or tags), the header is based on the most recent post in the archive, since archives don’t have a native modification date.
When enabled, browser caching is activated. If you make changes to content, be sure to clear your browser cache to see the updates. You can find shortcut keys to clear cache for different browsers here.
Note: This header is not added to search results pages, WooCommerce cart, checkout, or account pages.
On the homepage, the header is only included if it’s set to display a static page (via Settings > Reading).
You can test this feature using LastModified.ru.
Support for If-Modified-Since
Search engines often revisit your site and ask if content has changed since the last crawl. If it has, the server should respond with 200 OK; if not, it should return 304 Not Modified.
Clearfy Pro handles this automatically, helping search bots skip unchanged pages and focus on indexing new content faster. This also reduces server load since the full page isn’t sent—only headers.
You can test this behavior with LastModified.ru.
If you see the Last-Modified header but not a 304 response, check with your hosting provider to confirm support for If-Modified-Since headers.
Automatically Add ALT Tags to Images
Automatically adds alt attributes to images that don’t have one. The post title is used as the fallback text.
Only works for images in the post content area (via the the_content hook). Images in headers, footers, sidebars, or widgets aren’t affected—you’ll need to add ALT text manually for those.
For best SEO, we still recommend adding unique, keyword-rich ALT text manually, especially when you use multiple images per post.
Hide External Links in Comments (via JS)
This feature hides external links in comment content using JavaScript. It replaces <a> tags with <span> elements and applies link-like styles. These styles can be customized using filters (see instructions below).
Hide Author URLs in Comments (via JS)
Removes the external link from the comment author’s name using JavaScript. The anchor tag is replaced with a <span>. This only works with the default WordPress comment form via the get_comment_author_link filter.
Custom styling for these pseudo-links is supported and can be overridden (see documentation below).
Noindex for Pagination Pages
Adds the following tag to paginated pages (like /page/2/):
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
This tells search engines not to index pagination pages but still follow the links on them. Works with both Yoast SEO and All in One SEO plugins, using their hooks if available, or adds the tag directly via wp_head if not.
Custom robots.txt
By default, WordPress generates a virtual robots.txt file, which doesn’t exist physically on the server. It typically looks like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Sitemap: https://clearfy.ru/wp-sitemap.xmlThis file doesn’t account for many parts of your site that are better left out of search results.
Clearfy Pro replaces it with a more SEO-friendly virtual robots.txt that you can fully customize. The file still doesn’t physically exist, but you have full control over the rules.
To reset it back to default, simply clear the contents of the robots.txt field and save your settings.
Force Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS
⚠️ Your site must already have an active SSL certificate and be accessible via HTTPS.
This option forces all HTTP traffic to redirect to HTTPS. It’s not a full SSL setup—just a redirect. For full setup instructions, follow this guide: How to properly switch to HTTPS.
This redirect uses the init hook. If you prefer server-level redirects (faster and more reliable), use .htaccess as described in the guide above.
Note: This setting is not exported to avoid breaking your site if it’s restored on a non-HTTPS domain.
Remove Duplicate Title from Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs
If you’re using Yoast SEO, this option removes the last item in breadcrumbs to prevent showing the page title twice.
Replace Yoast Breadcrumb Title with Post Title
Also for Yoast SEO — replaces the last breadcrumb item with the actual page/post title (as used in <title>) for better consistency.
This feature was added based on user feedback. If you just want to remove the last item entirely, use the previous option.
Remove <image:image> from Yoast XML Sitemap
Deprecated: This option will soon be removed. It previously helped prevent issues with Yandex indexing <image> tags in sitemaps, but this is no longer necessary.
Remove Yoast SEO HTML Comment
Yoast SEO adds a comment in the site’s source code like:
<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.0.2 - https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/ -->Clearfy Pro removes this comment from your site’s HTML.
Canonical URLs for Paginated Pages (Yoast SEO)
For Yoast SEO users — this option helps reduce duplicate content by setting the canonical URL of paginated pages to the main archive/category URL (without /page/2, etc.).
Supports categories, taxonomies, authors, and the homepage.
Remove JSON-LD Structured Data from Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO adds structured data using application/ld+json in your site’s <head>. It includes basic site details like name, description, search link, and breadcrumbs.
If your theme already supports structured data via Schema.org markup, it’s a good idea to disable this to avoid duplication.
Note: Yandex does not support JSON-LD.
Duplicates
Remove Date Archives
By default, WordPress creates three types of date-based archives: by year (/2021/), by month (/2021/04/), and by day (/2021/04/01/). This means the same post can appear at multiple URLs—plus on the homepage and in categories—creating duplicate content.
Date archives rarely add value and can hurt your SEO by wasting crawl budget and splitting ranking signals. Clearfy Pro automatically redirects all date archive URLs to your homepage.
Remove Author Archives
WordPress creates an author archive page for every user with published posts, like /author/admin/ or /author/jane/.
If your site has only one author or publishes under a single brand, these archives are unnecessary duplicates. Author archives are only useful for multi-author sites that want visitors to browse by author.
Clearfy Pro can redirect all author archive URLs to your homepage to prevent duplicate content.
Remove Tag Archives
Tags create their own archive pages, like /tag/travel/ or /tag/cooking/. While tags can help organize content, they’re often used just for related-post plugins rather than for users.
Poorly managed tag archives can generate tons of thin or duplicate content, harming SEO. Clearfy Pro lets you disable tag archives by redirecting them to your homepage.
Remove Attachment Pages
Whenever you upload a media file to WordPress, it creates its own attachment page with a unique URL. For example, adding 10 images to a post creates 10 extra, often worthless pages.
These attachment pages usually add no value to users or search engines.
Clearfy Pro automatically redirects attachment pages:
- To the parent post, if the media is attached to one.
- To the homepage, if the media is unattached.
Remove Paginated Post Duplicates
WordPress allows splitting long posts using the <!--nextpage--> tag, which creates URLs like /post/2/, /post/3/, etc.
Even without intentional pagination, users (or bots) can append /2/, /3/, etc. to any post URL and get duplicate content.
While WordPress 5.5 fixed this for most sites, older setups may still have the issue. Clearfy Pro can automatically redirect these duplicate pagination URLs to the main post URL.
Remove ?replytocom
The ?replytocom parameter is a common issue for WordPress sites. It gets added to comment reply links and can generate thousands of unnecessary, duplicate URLs that clutter search engine indexes.
If you’re using one of the WPShop.ru themes, this problem is already handled and you can skip this option.
Clearfy Pro automatically removes the ?replytocom parameter from your URLs and redirects users to the clean post URL, helping you keep your site SEO-friendly.
Security
Hide wp-login.php
By default, every WordPress site has a predictable login URL: /wp-login.php or /wp-admin/. Hackers and bots often target these to try brute-force attacks. Enabling this option lets you change the login URL to something custom, blocking automated attacks and hiding your admin page from prying eyes.
After logging in through the new URL, you’ll be redirected back to /wp-admin/ as usual. That’s normal behavior and only happens once you’ve entered valid credentials.
Prevent Author Enumeration
WordPress can reveal usernames through author archive URLs. For example, accessing /?author=1 redirects to the author page displaying the username—giving attackers an easy target for password guessing.
Clearfy Pro automatically blocks this by redirecting any author parameter requests to your homepage, protecting your users’ login names.
Hide Login Error Messages
By default, WordPress shows detailed error messages when login fails—telling users if it was the username or password that was incorrect. This information can help attackers figure out valid usernames and focus on cracking passwords.
With this option enabled, WordPress will always show a generic error message like “Invalid username or password,” giving hackers no clues about what went wrong.
Disable xmlrpc.php
XML-RPC is a protocol that allows remote connections to your site—like the official WordPress mobile app or third-party tools. However, it has known vulnerabilities:
- Attackers can abuse the pingback feature to launch DDoS attacks.
- They can attempt massive brute-force attacks using the
wp.getUsersBlogsmethod.
Example request sent to /xmlrpc.php:
In most cases, you don’t need XML-RPC enabled at all. Clearfy Pro lets you disable it completely to block these attack vectors.
Limit Login Attempts
This feature protects your login page against brute-force attacks by locking out IPs that repeatedly enter incorrect credentials.
With the default settings, after 5 failed attempts from an IP, that address is locked out for 15 minutes. If it fails repeatedly (3 lockouts), it’s blocked for 24 hours. This reduces the risk of automated attacks that try thousands of password combinations.
You can also maintain a whitelist of IP addresses that are exempt from lockouts, and a blacklist to permanently block known malicious IPs. IP ranges and masks aren’t supported; add one IP per line.
Remove the Meta Generator Tag
By default, WordPress adds a <meta name="generator"> tag in the site’s <head> section that reveals the WordPress version you’re using. While it serves no real purpose for your visitors, it gives attackers useful information to target known vulnerabilities.
If you don’t see it removed after enabling this option, check your theme’s header.php file—it may be hardcoded there.
Remove Version Parameters from Styles
Stylesheets in WordPress often load with a version parameter like ?ver=1.4.4. This exposes plugin, theme, or WordPress versions to anyone viewing your source code. It can also interfere with browser caching, slowing down your site.
This option removes those version parameters, improving security and performance.
Remove Version Numbers from Scripts
Just like with stylesheets, script files often include a ?ver= parameter that reveals the WordPress, plugin, or theme version. This exposes sensitive info to anyone viewing your site’s source code and also prevents effective browser caching, which can slow down your site’s loading speed.
Modules
Transliteration of Titles and File Names
Converts Cyrillic characters to Latin letters in URLs and file names.
Works like plugins such as Rus To Lat, Cyr2Lat, and similar. If this option is enabled in Clearfy Pro, you can safely uninstall those plugins.
Supports Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Tatar, Armenian, Kazakh, and Bulgarian.
Avatars
Disable Gravatars
By default, WordPress loads user avatars from the external service gravatar.com. If your site doesn’t use comments or doesn’t show author avatars, you can disable them. In that case, a lightweight placeholder image (under 2Kb) from Clearfy Pro will be used locally.
You can create a unique avatar at WPAvatar.ru. We also recommend optimizing images with TinyPNG to reduce file size.
Enable Local Avatars
Allows users with Author role and above to upload custom avatars on their profile page in the admin panel. This way, you can disable all Gravatars across the site, while authors and editors can still upload avatars that will display on your site.
Disable Comments
This option disables both displaying and adding new comments on your site. You can choose to disable comments site-wide or only for specific post types, such as pages.
Existing comments remain in the database and will reappear if you turn comments back on.
Disable Comments via XML-RPC
WordPress allows submitting comments through external apps using XML-RPC, which spammers often exploit. Enable this to block comment posting through XML-RPC.
Disable Comments via REST API
Similarly, the REST API lets users post comments outside of the website interface. If you don’t use this feature (which applies to 99% of sites), enable this option to disable it.
Remove Comments from the Admin Interface
Completely removes all comment-related elements from your site and admin panel: Recent Comments widget, comment RSS feeds, comments in the admin bar, the Comments menu in the dashboard, and the Recent Comments block on the admin dashboard.
Content Protection
These features don’t block search engines from indexing your site and don’t alter the text in the source code. They only control how users can interact with content in their browser.
Keep in mind this is not 100% protection — content remains accessible to search engines and anyone who knows how to inspect source code. But it helps prevent easy copy-pasting.
If you want your content to be freely copied, don’t enable these options or only use the “Source Link on Copy” setting.
⚠️ These protections apply only to visitors who are not logged in. To test, log out or use your browser’s private/incognito mode.
Add Source Link on Copy
Automatically adds a link to the original article when someone copies text from your site. By default, the format is:
<br>Source: %link%
where %link% is replaced with the current page URL.
If you want a line break, include the <br> tag in the settings.
Disable Right-Click
Prevents the context menu from opening on the page, including right-click actions. You cannot exclude specific pages from this restriction.
Disable Text Selection
Blocks text selection everywhere on the site. No exceptions for specific areas or pages.
Disable Keyboard Shortcuts
Disables shortcuts like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+U, Ctrl+S, Ctrl+X, and Ctrl+Shift+C. (On MacOS, the same applies but with Cmd instead of Ctrl.)
Cookie Notice
For some countries, if your site collects personal data via cookies (which most sites do through analytics, metrics, or ads), you need to display a cookie consent message. In the EU, this is regulated by GDPR; in Russia, by personal data laws. You should check local requirements for your country.
Clearfy Pro can display a small message at the bottom of the screen. The default text is:
This site uses cookies to store data. By continuing to use this site, you consent to this.
You can customize the message, position, and colors in the settings.
All styles and scripts for this message are inlined in the footer, so they don’t slow down page loading.
After the message is closed, a cookie named clearfy_cookie_hide is set for one year, preventing the notice from showing again to that user during that time.
Hide Posts
On the Homepage
Enter post IDs separated by commas to hide those posts from the homepage (is_front_page). This works only for the default latest posts feed on the homepage. If you use a page builder, custom theme, or a non-standard post display, hiding won’t work because those usually use separate queries.
How to find post IDs?
In Archives
Enter post IDs separated by commas to hide those posts from all archives (categories, tags, and other archive types — is_archive). Works with standard category displays.
How to find post IDs?
In Search Results
Enter post IDs separated by commas to hide those posts from search results (is_search). Works with the default WordPress search. If you use advanced search systems like Yandex or Google custom search, this won’t work.
How to find post IDs?
XML Sitemap
These settings only apply to the default XML sitemap introduced in WordPress 5.5, located at /wp-sitemap.xml.
The default sitemap doesn’t cover all needs yet, so most sites replace it with Yoast SEO or XML Sitemaps plugin and disable the built-in one to avoid duplicates.
Disable Users in Sitemap
The default sitemap includes a users page (/wp-sitemap-users-1.xml), which is not great for security or SEO. Enable this option to remove users from the sitemap.
Additional
Disable Gutenberg Editor
Since WordPress 5.0, Gutenberg is the default editor. Enable this option to disable Gutenberg and restore the classic editor.
It disables the editor in the admin panel, removes Gutenberg CSS and JS from the source code, and removes all related filters.
Disable Gutenberg Widgets
Since WP 5.8, regular widgets were replaced with Gutenberg blocks. This can cause layout issues and feels less user-friendly. This option disables Gutenberg widgets and restores classic widgets, similar to the Classic Widgets plugin.
PageSpeed Passive Event Listeners
Added to fix the Google PageSpeed warning about “Passive event listeners not being used to improve scrolling performance.”
We don’t recommend chasing PageSpeed scores as it doesn’t affect rankings or traffic.
Clearfy Pro tries to enable passive mode on all listeners (touchstart, scroll, wheel).
Does not work with the Yandex.Market widget.
Sometimes Google still flags certain scripts that use listeners. In our case, it doesn’t affect performance since those are used only for testing, so this warning can be safely ignored.
Disable RSS Feeds
If you don’t use RSS feeds (What is RSS?), you can disable them completely.
This removes all RSS feed links from the source code and sets redirects. Comment feeds (site.ru/post/feed/) redirect to the post itself; other feeds redirect to the homepage.
Remove “Website” Field from Comment Form
Disable this to stop users from leaving comments just to post links to their own sites.
Works only with the default WordPress comment form since it removes the field via built-in filters. Does not work with custom comment forms or external commenting systems.
Remove WordPress.org Links from Admin Bar
The top admin bar starts with the WordPress logo and external links to wordpress.org, documentation, and forums. This isn’t critical but can be removed for a cleaner admin bar.
Disable Admin Bar
The admin bar (top toolbar) appears for logged-in users. Clearfy Pro can disable it for all users except admins. Useful if you want a cleaner interface for editors or contributors.
Update Email Notifications
By default, WordPress automatically sends email notifications when it updates itself (since version 3.4) and for theme and plugin updates (since version 5.5). Clearfy Pro lets you disable these email alerts completely—your site will still update as usual, but without the clutter in your inbox.
Widgets
Default WordPress widgets like “Pages,” “Calendar,” and “Tag Cloud” add extra database queries and are rarely used on modern sites.
– The “Pages” widget can easily be replaced with a custom menu widget.
– The “Calendar” widget mostly creates unnecessary archive links by date—best to disable if you don’t need it.
– If you don’t use tags on your site, removing the “Tag Cloud” widget helps keep things clean and efficient.
Clearfy Pro makes it easy to disable these outdated widgets to optimize performance and simplify your site’s design.
Post Revisions
Every time you save or update a post or page, WordPress creates a revision—a copy you can restore later. While handy, these can pile up over time and bloat your database, slowing things down.
Clearfy Pro lets you limit the number of revisions (for example, to just the last 3–5) or disable them entirely if you don’t need them, helping keep your site fast and your database lean.
Redirects
The Redirect Manager module makes it easy to set up both internal and external redirects.
Use it to redirect old URLs after you change page or category slugs, create affiliate or masked links, or shorten and simplify your URLs.
– In the first field, enter the path you want to redirect *from*. For example, /partner/wpshop/. This path doesn’t even have to exist as an actual page on your site.
– In the second field, enter the destination URL—either an internal or external link.
You can also use the * wildcard in both fields to match any number of characters, making bulk redirects easy.
**Note:** For safety, you can’t redirect your homepage (/) to another URL. This prevents accidentally breaking your entire site.
Examples:
/old-post/ → /new-post/
— internal redirect from an old page to a new one/hosting/beget/ → https://beget.com/
— external redirect/product=* → /products/
— redirect anything starting with/product=to/products/
(e.g./product=12will go to/products/)/novosti/* → /news/*
— redirect anything under/novosti/to/news/
(e.g./novosti/post/will go to/news/post/)
404 Error Log
The 404 Error Log tracks any missing pages or files requested on your site.
It helps you quickly identify broken internal links, missing images, CSS or JavaScript files, or incorrect URLs. The log stores the last 50 not-found URLs for easy review.
You may also see strange or suspicious-looking requests in the log, like:
/admin/.env
/wp-content/plugins/ioptimization/IOptimize.php?rchk
/phpversion.php
/pinfo.php
/wp-content/uploads/upload_index.php
/registrationNo need to worry about these—they’re common automated scans looking for vulnerabilities on all websites.
Focus instead on fixing broken internal links and missing images, which are the most common real issues.
IndexNow
A modern protocol that lets search engines instantly know when you update your content.
IndexNow helps get your new or updated pages indexed faster by notifying search engines directly as soon as you make changes.
Learn more in Yandex’s blog or on the official IndexNow site.
Video on what IndexNow is and how to set it up in WordPress:
IndexNow Key
Your IndexNow key is automatically generated when you install or update the plugin. It’s used to verify that the submission requests are really coming from your site.
You don’t need to manually create, upload, or obtain the key elsewhere—just paste it into the field in Clearfy Pro.
**Key requirements:**
- Can include letters (a–z, A–Z), numbers (0–9), hyphens (-), and periods (.)
- Length between 8 and 128 characters