{"id":128193,"date":"2014-04-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/premium.wpmudev.org\/blog\/?p=128193"},"modified":"2014-05-30T01:44:46","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T05:44:46","slug":"easter-eggs-in-wordpress-whats-there-to-get-eggs-cited-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/easter-eggs-in-wordpress-whats-there-to-get-eggs-cited-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Eggs in WordPress: What’s There to Get Eggs-Cited About?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What happened to Easter\u00a0eggs in WordPress? Have they disappeared forever?<\/p>\n

Since The Matrix Has You Easter egg<\/a> surprised (and freaked out\u2026<\/a>) users in WordPress 2.6, there hasn\u2019t been a single hidden feature in more than four years. That\u2019s 13 versions of WordPress.<\/p>\n

Easter eggs are fun to discover and provide a cheeky outlet for developers who have put a lot of time and work into a program and want to leave something of themselves behind. Easter eggs are\u00a0silly and don’t often make sense<\/a>, but mostly it’s fun finding one yourself and sharing it before your friends have stumbled across it.<\/p>\n

\"Easter<\/a>
Where are the Easter eggs in WordPress?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of discussion recently about the need for a writing style guide for core<\/a>. In a recent WP Shout post,\u00a0WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg poo-pooed the idea, saying, “WP has always been opinionated software with a lot of personality. Every year or two people try to neuter it, remove a bit of its soul, and sometimes it gets through.\u201d
\n
\nThat said, isn’t it sad that Easter eggs seem to have disappeared from WordPress? Is the WordPress personality Mullenweg jumped in to defend slowly being \u2013 as he put it \u2013 “neutered?”<\/p>\n

Or are Easter eggs annoying and confusing for users who don’t understand what they are? Do Easter eggs just provide more work for developers who feel the need to remove them to prevent users finding them?<\/p>\n

Should there be Easter eggs in future versions of WordPress? Have your say in our poll.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

[polldaddy poll=7977721]<\/div>\n

The Tradition of Easter Eggs in Software<\/h2>\n

Easter eggs \u2013 named after the Easter tradition of hiding chocolate eggs for children to find \u2013 have been part of software for 35 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The story goes that in the early days of software development, the identities of programmers were jealously guarded because software studios didn\u2019t want their staff to gain celebrity status and eclipse the brands they had carefully created.<\/p>\n

At the time, Warren Robinett, a programmer for Atari, didn\u2019t exactly appreciate the lack of acknowledgement for his work. After failing to get his name into the manual for the Atari 2600 game Adventure, he snuck his name into the game itself<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

The Matrix Has You<\/h2>\n

This Matrix-inspired Easter egg appeared when a user tried to compare two versions of the same revision in the post editor.<\/p>\n

While the Easter\u00a0egg was intended as a light-hearted bit of fun, there were some site admins who weren\u2019t all that amused and sought out ways to remove it.<\/p>\n

The Disable The Matrix Has Your plugin <\/a>soon appeared.<\/p>\n

In response to a Trac ticket<\/a> seeking to remove the hidden feature, Mullenweg commented, \u201cGotta have a little soul\u201d and “This ticket is a parody of every default argument people make in WordPress development.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lead core developer Andrew Nacin dismissed claims the Easter\u00a0egg was unprofessional and refused to remove it from core, saying many big companies included easter eggs in their software.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t seen the Matrix Easter egg, check out Victor Font\u2019s video.<\/p>\n

aHnuS3mtsSo<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Adding Your Own Easter Eggs to WordPress<\/h2>\n

The Konami Easter Egg plugin<\/a> allows you to add an Easter egg to your site and create a custom password to access the secret.<\/p>\n

Only people who know the secret code will see your message. By default, the code is the classic Konami cheat code (up up down down left right left right b a enter) but you can change it to anything you like.<\/p>\n

You can also customize the css to change the colors on your hidden page.
\n<\/p>\n

Easter Eggs for Developers<\/h2>\n

Some would argue an Easter egg still exists in WordPress, though it\u2019s really more a developer\u2019s shortcut tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you go to http:\/\/example.com\/wp-admin\/options.php?option_group_id=all (replacing \u201cexample\u201d with your site), you\u2019ll be taken to a hidden page in your WordPress backend with lots of extra juicy\u00a0options.<\/p>\n

Should we have Easter eggs in WordPress?<\/p>\n

Easter eggs aren\u2019t as popular as they once were. Back in 2009 there were four updated plugins that allowed you to add Easter eggs to your site \u2013 Customizable Konami Code<\/a>, WP Cornify<\/a>, WP-Konami<\/a> and Konami Easter Egg<\/a>. Only Konami Easter Egg<\/a> has been updated in the past two years.<\/p>\n

So what do you think? Should we have Easter eggs in WordPress? Tell us below and don\u2019t forget to vote in the poll.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Image credits: James Nash<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happened to Easter eggs in WordPress? Have they disappeared forever?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164650,"featured_media":128351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"blog_reading_time":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_tutorials_categories":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,235,4],"tags":[],"tutorials_categories":[],"class_list":["post-128193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-community","category-misc","category-plugins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216670,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128193\/revisions\/216670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128193"},{"taxonomy":"tutorials_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tutorials_categories?post=128193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}