18 Responses to “How to Protect your Wordpress Theme Files”

1. Alfred Dec 28th, 2007 at 3:42 am

   Creating an html file can block access from the browser, but tools like getright browser will still show the files.

   I think you need to use the Index Manager in your cpanel and set the no index option for these directories.

2. Techblissonline Dot Com Dec 28th, 2007 at 9:14 am

   i agree with alfred…

   or you can have this in robots.txt for all bots…

   Disallow: /wp-content/

3. nirmaltv Dec 28th, 2007 at 10:14 am

   @Alfred,
   Thanks for the info.

   @Rajesh,
   Adding in robots.txt will only prevent search engines I guess.

4. Arpit Jacob Dec 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am

   Thanks Nirmal . I haven’t yet down to doing this. haven’t got time because of Christmas.

5. Techblissonline Dot Com Dec 28th, 2007 at 3:37 pm

   try it and see…even noindex is for search engines…

6. Techblissonline Dot Com Dec 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm

   you will have several such directories exposed and having an index.html for every directory is not the right way to do it…

7. Vijay Dec 28th, 2007 at 8:54 pm

   I wonder who would be so careless as to store the zipped version in the theme dir! However, I ensure that my theme files are not accessible publicly! I am sure these tips can be useful to new users!

8. Shivaranjan Dec 28th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

   Good tip that can prevent you from simple geeks but as alfred said hackers would be easily bypass this.

9. Ronald Dec 28th, 2007 at 9:13 pm

   How if we set the .httaccess and addedd script like this : Options -Indexes ?

10. Logesh Dec 28th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

    I think using the .htaccess file is the best way. Because, as alfred has said some download managers could look into the directories, and adding robots.txt file will only protects from the search engines and not from the visitors. So i highly recommend to use a .htaccess file

11. Haris Dec 29th, 2007 at 12:43 am

    Can’t we CHMOD the folder and prevent anyone else from getting in it?

12. nirmaltv Dec 29th, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    I feel from the comments above, writing a rule in .htaccess may be the best option.

13. Ronald Dec 29th, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    I think to protect that directory, you can use a PHP script or .httaccess + .htpasswd file to prevent someone else download your themes/plugins.

14. Garry Conn Jan 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    This will thwart the attempts from many… but most people are after your CSS. They can get the rest of what is needed just by right clicking and viewing source and capturing your div tags and etc… The ultimate way to prevent theme theft is to figure out a way to prevent people from gaining access to your CSS.

15. nirmaltv Jan 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    @Garry,
    I agree with you, there should be some way to prevent access to CSS files.

16. Garry Conn Jan 3rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    Unfortunately, I don’t see how it is possible. Bloggers are all about having machine readable content. And unfortunately, bloggers are all about having this machine readable content looking pretty. CSS is nothing more than making regular text look styled and pretty.

    For bloggers that didn’t care about search engines and having their content machine readable, I wonder if it is possible to create a WordPress site written in Javascript?

17. EvoWRZ Aug 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    Thanks for the tip, i did it in my blog.

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