GNU Terry Pratchett

The GNU Terry Pratchett plugin transmits an “X-Clacks-Overhead” header reading, “GNU Terry Pratchett” so that Terry’s name is whispered forevermore in the Internet’s “overhead”.

In Pratchett’s “Going Postal”, workers who die in the line of duty have their names transmitted up and down the Discworld’s telegraph system as a tribute.

This plugin makes it easy for WordPress users to do the same for Terry Pratchett, without having to modify their server configuration.

The GNU Terry Pratchett headers

The plugin adds the GNU Terry Pratchett header in two ways:

1. As an HTTP header (if you don’t use a WordPress page caching plugin).
2. As a meta tag in your HTML with the http-equiv attribute.

Settings

The text sent in HTTP headers and meta tags is “GNU Terry Pratchett” by default.

Change this by visiting Settings → GNU Terry Pratchett in your WordPress admin area and editing the “X-Clacks-Overhead header” field.

This option lets you honor other people you would like to remember by making them a small part of your site’s content forever.

Checking the HTTP header is sent

There are several ways to check that the HTTP header is appearing for your site:

1. With your terminal (curl -I example.com)
2. With Chrome’s Network tab.
3. With the Clacks Overhead Chrome plugin or the GNU Terry Pratchett Firefox extension.
4. Using the Server Header Checker.

Note that the HTTP header is not sent if you use a page caching plugin. To send the HTTP header and continue to use a caching plugin, add the header at the server level. See http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/ for options.

Checking the meta tag is added

You can check that the meta tag is visible by viewing your site’s HTML source and searching for “GNU Terry Pratchett”.

The Clacks Overhead plugin for Chrome and the GNU Terry Pratchett extension for Firefox both light up when they detect the HTML meta tag or HTTP header.

Credits and contributions

Inspired by this reddit post, boingboing’s report, and the GNU Terry Pratchett website.

Contributions welcome at the GitHub repo.