Be Careful what WordPress Themes you Install

If you are one of those WordPress bloggers who go hunting for beautiful WordPress themes outside the WordPress repository then be careful !!! . There are many websites offering some breathtakingly beautiful themes . But these themes are never submitted to the WordPress repository . Instead they are made available for free download from other websites . Have you ever thought what the catch is ?

Most of these websites offer WordPress Theme that  have sponsored links in the footer . And these are not the usual credit links pointing to the author. They may contain any : ” meet a  girl tonight , cheap Viagra’s , free casino   …..  Simply put , the theme will end up placing some spammy links on your site – links to unrelated sites with doubtful quality .

Google uses links to determine the relevancy of websites and pages in relation to the content and keywords used . If you link to another website from your blog , Google interprets this as a vote of confidence and will adjust the search results so that the page that was linked to performs better in searches when somebody does a related search . Obviously , this can be manipulated . If Google detects artificial manipulation of page rank (sponsored links) , it will damage your page-rank . Simply put .. , be very suspicious with themes outside the WordPress repository ..

In the past , you could manually edit template files (footer.php)  and remove these sponsored links . Nowadays , some theme designers use encryption techniques to hide  the template “schema” , so only experienced developers can locate these code snippets . You can always install a plugin that explores  your core files (and theme folders ) for  suspicious code , but well written code may hide its existence from these plugins .

Read also : How to find backdoor in a Hacked WordPress .

 Plugins:

• Theme Authenticity Checker
• Exploit Scanner
• Theme Check
• WordPress File monitor plugin
  

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