Unicorns in Your WordPress Dashboard

Unicorns in your WordPress dashboard. On April 1 2012 self hosted WordPress sites had their admin dashboards usurped by unicorn images. My first thought when I saw the unicorns was that the website was hacked.

However it turned out this was simply an April Fool joke. The theme developers promised some mystifying things in the theme description, and this was it. The dashboard unicorns were irritating, but harmless in the long run. The function only happened on April 1.

Do you have Mystique Unicorn Pictures in WordPress Dashboard

Unicorn images are showing up in WordPress Dashboards. If you are using the Mystique WordPress Theme for a self hosted WordPress blog this is not a sign of a hacked site. It’s an April Fools joke and it will go away on April 2. Apart from being annoying it is harmless and probably not worth editing the code to prevent the function.

The image URL shows up as coming from cornify.com – http://www.cornify.com/getacorn.php with a variable string attached at the end.

If you want to stop the unicorns from cornify.com disrupting your WordPress Dashboard, the place to look is in the functions.php file in the Mystique Theme folder. Look for this code below. If you are using the current version of the theme it is on line 500 near the bottom of the file code. (Or do a text search for ‘ some fun ‘ if you can’t find it).

// some fun : )
if(date('m-d', current_time('timestamp', true)) == '04-01') add_action('admin_footer', 'mystique_a1');
function mystique_a1(){
  ?>
 // <![CDATA[
src="http://www.cornify.com/js/cornify.js">
// ]]>
  <script type="text/javascript">
    jQuery(document).ready(function($){
      // show ponies on 1st click of a link
      $('a').click(function(){
        if($(this).data('pwned')) return true;
        cornify_add();
        $(this).data('pwned', 1);
        return false;
      })

There are a few other functions listed under the “fun” section of the script. To remove them all delete everything from // some fun : ) to near the end of the file where it says  YOU MUST LEAVE THIS PART IN THE FILE!

 </script>
  <?php
}

Unicorns in Earlier Versions of Mystique Theme

First thing, if you’re seeing this the version of Mystique is out of date and should be updated.

If you haven’t updated to the latest version, or for some reason don’t want to, the function is in core.php (line 3531 but this may depend on your php editor). Look for a text line called  (function mystique_get_avatar) or the date string if (date(‘m-d’) == ’04-01′)?. If you want to fix this older theme version see How to remove the Unicorn avatar in Mystique WordPress theme

A Waste of Time but Smiling

These Unicorns in the WordPress Dashboard wasted 3 hours of my time today. I trawled the guilty website for malware, successful hacking attempts and all the usual suspects causing unexplained site behaviour.

Eventually an old post in the WordPress.org support forums led me to the article mentioned above. This post dealt with last years April Fools Day script in Mystique.

I decided to leave the code in place. I was annoyed at first, but after finding the cause and how to fix it I had a good chuckle. This reminded me that we can take ourselves and our occupation too seriously, and after two solid days of some heavy Drupalling the light humour was welcome.

Get your own back by saving the images from cornify for the kids, they’ll enjoy them. And seeing as they were placed on your site without your permission, copyright law cannot apply.

More Articles about Mystique WordPress Theme

• Error Message Using Mystique Theme
• NextGEN Gallery with Theme Mystique
• Correct Mystique Site Title Header