{"id":53,"date":"2011-06-30T07:12:58","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T07:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/?p=53"},"modified":"2018-12-03T22:07:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T22:07:31","slug":"what-is-hello-dolly-plugin-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wordpress\/what-is-hello-dolly-plugin-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What IS The Hello Dolly WordPress Plugin About?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-55\" title=\"hello dolly plugin\" src=\"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hello-dolly-plugin.jpg\" alt=\"hello dolly plugin\" width=\"225\" height=\"226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hello-dolly-plugin.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hello-dolly-plugin-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 85vw, 225px\" \/><em><strong>If you&#8217;ve ever installed a WordPress plugin, you&#8217;ve seen &#8216;Hello Dolly&#8217;!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>What the heck is it doing there? Just what does it do?<\/p>\n<p>And more to the point, why does it sometimes insist on installing itself again every time you upgrade WordPress.<\/p>\n<p>The Hello Dolly plugin has been included with WordPress since the very early days. And it&#8217;s still included even now in the latest version.<\/p>\n<p>But why?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It serves no real useful purpose, and was perhaps originally included to demonstate how plugins work.<\/p>\n<h2>What Does Hello Dolly Do?<\/h2>\n<p>If you ever bothered to Activate the plugin, you would find that all it does is put a random lyric from the song &#8216;Hello, Dolly&#8217; (popularised by Louis Armstrong) at the top of every page of the WordPress admin area.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, that&#8217;s it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ahhhh, so it&#8217;s a song?&#8221; Yes. This one:-<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"840\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kmfeKUNDDYs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Well, hello, Dolly. It&#8217;s so nice to have you back where you belong&#8230;&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Does Anyone Actually Use The Plugin?<\/h2>\n<p>Incredibly, a lot of people do use it.<\/p>\n<p>It has <strong>active<\/strong> installs of over 1 million! Although I suspect that&#8217;s because most people have no idea what it does, and if they can safely deactivate and\/or delete it.<\/p>\n<p>You <strong>can<\/strong> of course safely deactivate it, and delete it too if you want (I know I do). The only difference it will make to your blog is the absence of song quotes in the admin area. Because that is literally all it does.<\/p>\n<p>It is just a little bit irritating however that even if you delete it that it can reappear every time you upgrade WordPress. (<strong>NOTE:<\/strong> this no longer seems to happen &#8211; although it may still happen for certain hosts\/script updating apps e.g. Fantastico &#8211; if it still happens for you let me know below who you host with and how you update WordPress).<\/p>\n<h2>Who Downloads Hello Dolly..?<\/h2>\n<p>The amusing, yet bizarre, thing is that despite it being included with every version of WordPress ever&#8230; if you check the current direct download stats at WordPress.org, it still gets downloaded <strong>hundreds of times every single day<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-284\" src=\"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hellodollydownloads.png\" alt=\"Hello Dolly download stats\" width=\"548\" height=\"364\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hellodollydownloads.png 548w, https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hellodollydownloads-300x199.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 548px) 85vw, 548px\" \/><\/p>\n<div class='tm-tweet-clear'><\/div>\n<div class='tm-click-to-tweet'>\n<div class='tm-ctt-text'><a href='https:\/\/twitter.com\/share?text=About+1%2C000+Wordpress+users+per+week+actually+download+the+Hello+Dolly+plugin.+Over+600%2C325+to+date.&#038;via=millservices&#038;related=millservices&#038;url=https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wordpress\/what-is-hello-dolly-plugin-about\/' target='_blank'>About 1,000 WordPress users per week actually download the Hello Dolly plugin. Over 600,325 to date.<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/twitter.com\/share?text=About+1%2C000+Wordpress+users+per+week+actually+download+the+Hello+Dolly+plugin.+Over+600%2C325+to+date.&#038;via=millservices&#038;related=millservices&#038;url=https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wordpress\/what-is-hello-dolly-plugin-about\/' target='_blank' class='tm-ctt-btn'>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n<div class='tm-ctt-tip'><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Did these people delete it, and then immediately feel a great lyrical void in their lives?<\/p>\n<p>Were they hoping for an upgraded version with improved functionality? Enhanced lyrics, audio, maybe a trumpet solo.<\/p>\n<p>Was it you..?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve ever installed a WordPress plugin, you&#8217;ve seen &#8216;Hello Dolly&#8217;! What the heck is it doing there? Just what does it do? And more to the point, why does it sometimes insist on installing itself again every time you upgrade WordPress. The Hello Dolly plugin has been included with WordPress since the very early &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wordpress\/what-is-hello-dolly-plugin-about\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What IS The Hello Dolly WordPress Plugin About?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.millservices.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}