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Nulled WordPress Themes: Here’s Why You Need To Avoid Them!

Don't Use Nulled Themes!

nulled wordpress themes

WordPress is one of the best CMS in the world for creating a website, blog or an eCommerce website. There are more than 75 million websites are powered by WordPress as per a study conducted by a research center.

However, choosing a theme may be a bit confusing. There are free version themes and also premium version themes available. We highly recommend using premium version themes for your business website or blog.

Planning to use nulled WordPress themes or pirated WordPress plugin on your blog? Wait. Let us show you why you don’t want to do that. Last day, one of our users got asked about the topic – the bad side of using a nulled WordPress theme.

Well in this post, we are going to show you why it is a bad idea and why you need to stay away!

What Are  Nulled WordPress Themes?

nulled wordpress themes

There are so many premium WordPress themes shops are available. For example, GeneratePress, StudioPress, MyThemeShop, ThemeIsle, CSSIgniter, HappyThemes, etc…

A premium WordPress theme normally costs $50 for one year of support and updates. But, some folks are sharing the pirated version of the premium theme through their blog.

For example, if you Googled the word Genesis Framework, you will see the search result from StudioPress – the official theme creator.

But, if you replaced search keyword with – Genesis Framework nulled, you will see a lot of search results from third-party websites!

Those websites are sharing a pirated copy of the Genesis Framework without the official author’s permission and after injecting some malicious codes.

In those themes, the theme license will be cracked! So without paying for the premium theme, we will get it for free!

By the way, is it good? Let’s find out!

Why Avoid Nulled WordPress Themes

There are so many reasons are available for avoiding a nulled WordPress theme. Here, we are going to show you 7 issues you get when you use a pirated WordPress theme.

1. Malicious Code

The theme files that are downloaded are not untouched version! The folks will add some additional lines of codes to the theme files to crack it.

On top of that, they will also try adding custom JavaScript codes, iFrames, additional PHP files to the theme file. Not recommended by us and anyone in the industry.

This malicious codes will make the website vulnerable! Adding some codes will download some malware to your user’s device. In this way, you will lose trust and Google will penalize your blog for this issue.

2. No Updates and Support

These days, most developers will add license verification to their premium themes and plugins. By using a cracked theme, we can bypass the license verification, enjoy the full theme features.

However, when the theme author releases an updated product, you will not get auto updates! Most authors are updating their themes and plugins with security patches, new features, bug fixes, etc…

Using an outdated WordPress theme is not recommended. It will conflict with the WordPress version in some cases.

Also, you will not get support from the official author when you use a nulled WordPress theme. So if you went to an issue, you will be in big trouble – figure out the issue yourself or hire some freelancer for doing the job.

So for getting support from the official author and updates, you may want to purchase a premium theme from the official theme author’s shop.

3. Will Not Work Properly

Some pirated WordPress themes will not work properly. There will be some conflict with WordPress, other themes, plugins or some custom codes. If you are a developer, you could sort out the issue by analyzing the code.

If the theme is not working, you can do nothing! Or, change the theme completely.

4. Illegal

Think from the developer’s side.

They are creating a theme from scratch. How much time’ they’d take? Weeks or months may be. To create a fine WordPress theme or premium plugin, they put all their efforts, money on the project.

Hiring a batch of WordPress developers is not cheap. It’s a bit expensive than you think. So, pay for the premium plugin.

Also, the items that are marked under the GPL license is free to redistribute. Some theme clubs like MyThemeShop have not licensed their products under GPL.

So, without their permission, users won’t be able to share a single premium product. But, most folks do! We will not recommend downloading nulled themes.

5. Negative SEO

With the best contents, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and some SEO hacks, you could climb up on the search rankings! Yoast is one of the highly recommended WordPress SEO plugin which will help you to optimize your blog for the on-page SEO.

By starting a blog, our main goal is – write contents, get better ranking, make money online from the blog. You might want to get on the first page of the search result for driving traffic from search engines.

With a well-organized, SEO friendly  WordPress theme, that’s possible. But when you use a nulled WordPress theme, it is hard to get on top of the search result.

Some folks will add additional code which will block search engines from indexing the website. This will happen when you use most nulled WordPress themes.

6. Security

You are putting your business at risk. Let’s say that you are running an online shop and processing credit card payments. When you are using a nulled theme and you are inviting hackers to steal your customer’s data!

This could end up in legal issues – the end of your business.

On top of that, without your permission, they will be able to create an admin profile, delete your profile, take the complete control of your blog. Also, they can still access your WordPress database, clear everything that you added.

NOTE: We highly recommend you take daily backups of your WordPress blog. In our blog, we are using VaultPtrss – a premium WordPress backup solution by Automattic. If you prefer another backup plugin, check out BackupBuddy.

Also see: Tips To Protect a WordPress Bog in 2019.

7. Affects Website Speed

By using a CDN like Cloudflare, a caching plugin like WP Rocket, some speed hacks, and with a good website hosting company, your blog will load faster. However, the theme also got the main role in website speed and performance.

Using bulky themes will probably make the website down.

Here, when someone adds excess code to the original theme, probably it will make the theme bulky and will affect the speed. If you are wondering how to check the website speed, use Pingdom tool or GTmetrix.

Both tools work best for analyzing website speed. If the website is not performing well, users will start leaving your website. When you run an eCommerce website, this is not good for you.

Running content website? If the speed is not good and users are leaving the website within seconds, your rankings will drop! That’s pretty sure!

How To Scan WordPress Themes For Virus?

This is a widely used question. A developer could search for malicious codes for finding a redirect or a  vulnerability. Well, what about beginners?

Thankfully, there’s a solution available!

First of all, go to VirusTotal.

VirusTotal is one of the best and simple to use free file scanner available right now.  We could simply scan our digital files for viruses, malware, backdoors or trojan injection!

All we need to do is, simply upload the file to the engine.

Let me show you one example.

First of all, click on the choose file button. Or you can also drop the file to the interface for uploading it.

Once you got uploaded the file, confirm the upload.

The server will now start uploading the file, search for known malicious codes and viruses. At the end of the test, you will see the result.

Above, you could see that the theme that we uploaded is a clean one. That’s true – we purchased the Genesis Framework child theme. As a result, the theme is safe to use on a WordPress install.

Now, let’s try uploading a nulled WordPress theme to the scanner and see the results. I’ve got downloaded the latest version of the Genesis Framework from a famous nulled theme downloading website and scanned with the VirusTotal.

Here’s the result:

How’s it?

If you install these themes and activated, you will lose your admin access within minutes!

Want a detailed guide? See our post on how to detect malicious codes in WordPress themes and plugins.

Conclusion

If you don’t have money for purchasing a premium theme, leave it. From the WordPress theme repository, you could get a free theme related to the premium one. We recommend you using the GeneratePress theme.

GeneratePress is a multi-purpose WordPress theme which got the best features in the industry. Need to learn more about the theme? Check out our GeneratePress theme review.

Helped this nulled WordPress themes post to learn more about them? Let us know in the comments!

Christina
the authorChristina
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