WordPress theme editor is open-source software that allows site developers to edit WordPress theme files from the admin area.
Among its many functionalities, the theme editor feature will enable you to create folders, upload files, and remove any files and folders in themes and plugins. The feature also allows you to easily customize your themes and plugins directly.
How to Use Theme Editor?
The minimum requirements for using a theme editor are WordPress 3.3+, PHP 5.x, and MySQL 5.x. However, using the theme editor might not be the best choice if you aren’t familiar with coding.
Firstly, to the right of the admin page, there is a list of editable files in the currently active theme. Above the list of template files is a drop-down menu to switch between themes, even inactive ones. This functionality is confusing as users think they can select another theme to edit the code and activate it. However, it only opens the theme files in the editor. Activating the theme is done through “Appearance » Themes.”
Secondly, developers who don’t know FTP often use the theme editor to edit the functions.php file to paste a web snippet. However, if pasted wrongly, they can get locked out of their own website.
Thirdly, if you are a developer and don’t want users or customers to crack the site, disable the theme and plugin editor from the WordPress admin.
Key Theme Editor Plugin Features
- Edit Theme and Plugin Files
- Code Editors – Supports PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Fancy Box
- Code Mirror
- Create and remove folders and files in themes and plugins
- Upload and download files in themes and plugins
- Download whole theme and plugin
- Create a new Child Theme
- Duplicate existing Child Theme
- Move file from Parent to Child Theme
- Query/Selector
- Upload new images and download images
- Change and upload a new screenshot of the selected theme
- View all images of the selected theme
Extended Plugin Features
- Users Permissions
- User Role Permissions
- Email Notifications to Admin
- Edit Theme Files
- Edit plugin files
- Preview theme
- Child Theme permission