Why you shold never search for free wordpress themes in Google or anywhere else.

tagnu · 01-24-2011, 09:22 AM

The article shows the amount of malicious code and unwanted backlinks hidden in free wordpress themes available from (some of) the top 10 sites that show up on the Google search results page for the keyword 'Free wordpress themes'. Worth a read for everyone especially web devs.
http://wpmu.org/why-you-should-never...anywhere-else/

WeWatch · 01-25-2011, 11:51 PM

I analyzed some of the themes mentioned in that blog post. Here's my security analysis:

http://wewatchyourwebsite.com/wordpr...heyre-encoded/

nelson22 · 02-08-2011, 05:01 PM

this is very true. i have a similar experience with this, even though i paid for the template, the theme i used was still wordpress based, so i'd get a ton of spam which led me to use the plugin, akismet to catch all those spammy comments. it's irritating, but it does catch the majority of all spam. updating really helps as well as it'll quit for a little bit, but slowly build back up to par.

pumpkin · 02-10-2011, 03:46 PM

Scary stuff. I just used a security plugin on my theme and it showed a hidden link. Tried to remove it and the footer disappeared so I'm just gonna leave it

VIPStephan · 02-10-2011, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumpkin

Scary stuff. I just used a security plugin on my theme and it showed a hidden link. Tried to remove it and the footer disappeared so I'm just gonna leave it

You can always come here and ask about disappearing footers, you know? These are the CodingForums and there are a lot of savvy people that can help you remove hidden spam links.

Neo01 · 02-22-2011, 11:55 PM

Well the worst thing is that even paid Wordpress theme shows a hidden text when I use a website to detect.

gameutopia · 02-25-2011, 12:48 PM

A lot of the free and even paid wordpress themes I have worked with all contained hidden code. Mostly to get backlinks in the footer. Some where more difficult and coded trickier than others. At any rate if you pay for a theme it is very disappointing to find hidden links encoded to someonelse's benefit. They ought to give it away for free. Of course there are those that do more than backlinks in the footer. Be carefull with wordpress. It is a good script, but the extreme popularity makes for a lot of malicious activity.