If you purchase a theme from ThemeForest or any other original market then you don’t need to scan WordPress theme because they are Original themes, you pay for it and now it’s your property and they don’t have any malicious or virus code in it. So don’t worry and use it without any tension.
If you have a nulled theme then you must scan it before use, but first of all we advise you to not use any nulled themes because they are pirated copies of premium WordPress themes.
There are a lot of websites that provide nulled themes and anyone can download it for free but you can’t trust them because they add malicious code to a theme file and this is not an easy task to find it out.
Top reasons to not use nulled themes are
- If you use nulled theme then your website will not be secured and can be hacked
- Nulled theme have hiding code and this code can steal information from your website
- Nulled themes are bad for SEO because they can add spam links to your code which will destroy your website SEO.
- Some of the WordPress themes are sold with mixed license and you don’t have permission to use it, so if you use it then it can be copyright law violation.
- Nulled themes will never update and after some time it will be outdated and your website will not work properly.
- If you have any issue in your theme then nulled themes don’t have any support from theme developers.
So questions arise why they add malicious code to theme files? The answer is simple
- They need a backlink from your site
- They can access your website through that code without your permission
- They can add their advertisement links to your website and earn money through that links
- They can add spam links or they can down your website
In my 4 years personal experience once I used nulled theme in my client website because the client was not able to pay extra money for the theme so he told me to use a nulled theme, I complete the website and upload all data and this takes 7 days to complete and just before a day to presentation in the morning when I opened the website there was just a blank page, All of my data was erased, Cpanel was completely empty, the malicious code crashed my website and I lost my all data. So I suggest you not use any nulled theme on your website.
But if you have a theme which you get from a friend or from your community circle and they said that this is not a nulled theme and this theme is with GPL license then you must Scan that theme before use because you can’t compromise your or client website security.
Or you still want to use nulled theme then please don’t use it before scanning it. And if you use a nulled theme without scanning then this will put your website at serious risk.
How to Scan WordPress theme?
You can scan WordPress theme through different methods like you can manually checkup your WordPress theme if you have good knowledge of WordPress coding, You can also scan WordPress theme through different plugins, But we will guide you how you can scan your WordPress theme through an online website so follow these steps to scan WordPress theme before using it in your website.
- Open https://www.virustotal.com/
- Click on file
- Click on choose file
- Select your zip file that only has original theme files, not documentation, child theme, etc. Only a zip folder that has the theme files
- After uploading your theme it will show you a complete analysis report about that theme files and if that theme has any unwanted or malicious code then this website will detect that code.
Conclusion
First of All, if you want to design a WordPress website for yourself or for your client then this is required to purchase a theme and don’t use a nulled theme but in case you want to do some practicing or someone from your circle gives you a theme then you must scan WordPress theme before using.
Than you for your time.
Read our latest article Best software houses in Peshawar