What’s That Code in My WordPress Header?

Are you blogging on a self-hosted WordPress blog? Have you taken a glance at the code that makes up your theme and thought you were looking at another language? Well, the fact is you are looking at another language and if you don’t know what’s being said it could have disastrous results for your blog. Messing with one line can do a lot of damage but that’s not the only reason you should recognize what’s in your theme files, especially your header.php.

There are a lot of “free wordpress theme” sites cropping up. But not all of them are safe to download and use. Some of the owners of these sites include malicious code in the header.php (or, actually, any theme file, but for these purposes we’ll concentrate on just the header.php). The code that’s place can open a “back door” to your server which can allow hackers easy access to yoru site. From there they take over and give you the boot. That means a lot of headaches and maybe even a lost blog.

There are some tutorials on the WordPress Codex that will help you get started, but those too can be in a language not meant for the average blogger. Have no fear! David, from Devlounge, put together a nice tutorial for folks like us.

In that article you’ll see what most of that mysterious code means and why you need it for your theme. You’ll also get a feel of what should be in that file so you’ll know what to look for. You might even start to understand some of that foreign language that lives behind your blogging world.

Regular readers of Devlounge feel that the tutorial is to basic. I feel like it’s just right for beginners and can help more naive theme downloaders prevent attack from malicious coders.