How to Disable Really Simple Discovery service endpoint in WordPress?

What is RSD (Really Simple Discovery)?

Really Simple Discovery (RSD) is a WordPress feature that provides a way for external applications to discover various services that your site supports. However, RSD is an outdated technology and is no longer widely used. Disabling the RSD service endpoint in WordPress can help improve the security of your site and reduce the risk of attacks.

Here are some reasons why you might want to disable the RSD service endpoint in WordPress:

1. Improved security: Disabling RSD can help reduce the risk of attacks that exploit RSD vulnerabilities.
2. Reduced server load: By disabling RSD, you can reduce the number of HTTP requests and improve the load time of your site, which can help reduce the load on your server.
3. Better control over site appearance: By disabling RSD, you can ensure that your site’s appearance is consistent across different devices and browsers.

To disable the RSD service endpoint in WordPress, you can add the following code to your functions.php file:

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' );

This code will remove the RSD link from the head section of your site’s HTML, which will disable the RSD service endpoint.

Note that disabling the RSD service endpoint will not affect the functionality or appearance of your site, but it can help improve the security and performance of your site.

By default, new WordPress installation added Really Simple Discovery (RSD) links that gets appended to the header section of your blog.

This is how it looks when you inspect your site’s header section in Chrome.

<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="https://crunchify.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd">

Having it in Header section is not an issue but if you are not using any of discovery services then there is no point messing up and adding extra line to Header section.

Is there any other way to disable Really Simple Discovery using Plugin?

Yes.

• Download plugin WP Customizer.
• Enable toggle: Disable Really Simple Discovery service endpoint.

That’s it and you are all set. Hope this tutorial helps you.