Because we live in a digital age where information and resources are spread quickly across geographic boundaries, as a website owner, you may feel uncertain or overwhelmed about effectively managing the way that information is shared on your WordPress site.
As the owner of a website, security should be one of your major concerns.
After all, an important aspect of successful, safe website management is ensuring that files and downloads on your site are protected and in the right hands.
It seems like there is a plugin for just about everything you could possibly want to do with your WordPress website. This is a good thing. Plugins give your site utility beyond the standard functions of your chosen theme. This begs the question: How do WordPress plugins work?
Can you edit WordPress plugins? WordPress is an open-source content management system.
This means that the code for WordPress is offered up free under a license that allows anyone and everyone to study, change, and distribute changes and additions to anyone and for any purpose. So you can edit WordPress plugins, but there are important things to consider.
Let’s start with the basics to set the scene. Before diving into the potential security threat of a plugin let’s discuss what a WordPress (WP) plugin is and does.
Where they come from and what they do can help understand their vulnerabilities and give you a little perspective on their development. This is essential to figuring out: Can WordPress Plugins Contain Viruses?
A WordPress site isn’t an off the shelf solution. It is more of a collection of building blocks.
You don’t need to be an engineer to build a log cabin. However, the quality and functionality of the log cabin is based on the developer’s imagination and use of plugins.
For the content management system, WordPress, and the plugins to effectively and efficiently work together they need to be able to communicate in the same language.
If the plugins and the base WordPress core were developed through different coding languages you would be stuck with multiple arms of the website that couldn’t speak or work together. This is problematic to say the least.
When you use any type of WordPress plugin there are associated options that often need to be filled out for proper use. This could include account information, preference settings, or content and variable creation. Regardless of the actual utility of the option it is handled the same way by WordPress.
The more options a WordPress plugin has the more data will need to be stored by the content management system.
Where are the WordPress plugins stored is a great question. WordPress has adopted a highly standardized and easy to use common directory for all core files and folders.
This allows every plugin to be easy stored, updated, edited, and managed. This also allows for non-technical end users to manage their data without having a degree in computer engineering.
If you are running WordPress and have plugins and themes that you need to customize to fit the goals of your website then you need to understand your rights as a holder of that package of software. Similarly if you are modifying software to distribute to others you need to know if you can legally do this.
You need to understand the GNU GPL.