How do I get rid of that silly smiley face?

The smiley face you see on lots of WordPress powered sites is a cute reminder of the WordPress.com Stats plugin. If you have that plugin installed and see a smiley face, that means you have a theme that doesn’t automatically hide it. Here are a few ways to get rid of the cute but annoying little bugger.

1. Add a line in your style sheet to hide it.
   In your WordPress Admin, go to Appearance > Editor and select your stylesheet. Paste in the following code:

   img#wpstats{width:0px; height:0px; padding:0px; border:none; overflow:hidden}
   This forces the smiley face image into a box that essentially has no dimensions.

   **Please back up your style sheet before you make ANY changes, just in case!**

2. Use a theme that hides it without you having to do a thing.
   Most paid themes and some free themes are including that line of code (or something similar). This theme, Vigilance, is one of them.
3. Or use a Plugin:
   If you don’t want to bother with code & don’t want to search for a new theme, the WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover Plugin will solve your smiley face woes with just a couple clicks.

   In your admin, go to Plugins > Add New & search for the WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover and install it directly from your WordPress Admin.

   Activate the plugin & it should be gone.

It seems there’s a plugin for just aobut everything these days – just be aware the more plugins you use, the slower your site will be. So I recommend one of the first two options instead of the Plugin route.