Discover Where to Find Important WordPress Files

Places to Change WordPress Files

Some of them start editing the.php files inside their theme by going straight to Appearance > Editor. As a result, the website becomes broken.

As a result, web hosting by default disable the theme editor. If you are unfamiliar with the syntax and layout of PHP, it is quite easy to ruin your website.

You may occasionally need to make changes to certain theme files.

Examine the overview of the WordPress file structure to familiarize yourself with where things are located, including the files that should be edited carefully.

WordPress File Locations

If your Web Hosting Provider is cPanel, you may access files using the File Manager interface.

You have the option to connect to your hosting server using an FTP client, like FileZilla, and see files that way.

Go to your hosting account’s root directory to locate the files for your website. This is commonly known as “public_html.”

The root folder where WordPress is installed contains the fundamental files for the platform. The following are the files that you may need to change in the root:

• robots.txt – The robots.txt file instructs to bots that crawl websites, e.g. Googlebot.
• htaccess – The .htaccess file is a configuration file that is used by Apache, the most common web server software.
• wp-config.php – It is one of the most important WordPress files. It is located in the root and comprises of your website’s base configuration details, such as database connection information.

The /wp-admin/ directory

The /wp-admin/ directory comprises of all the backend WordPress dashboard files. You don’t need to change any files there.

The /wp-content/ directory

In the /wp-content/ directory, you’ll find your plugin, theme files, and uploads. Though there are other directories too, you most likely will never have dive into those.

The /wp-content/themes/ directory

In the themes directory, you will find your theme files as well as your style.css file. The style.css file is the file that most website owners need to modify. It contains the global font sizes, layouts, colors and spacing for your theme.

The /wp-content/plugins/ directory

The plugins directory comprises of plugin files.

The /wp-content/uploads/ directory

This directory comprises of files and graphics that you have uploaded for your pages and posts. The site’s media is arranged by year/month.

The /wp-includes/ directory

Not every time will you need to make changes to any files in the wp-includes directory. The packages that are included and kept up to date by the WordPress core team may be found in this directory. You must have access to such packages since your themes and plugins rely on them.

You may look at the whole list of files in the WordPress codex and the WordPress directory structure.

Important:

Always create a duplicate of the original WordPress file and store it on your hard disk before making any modifications. If you’re not happy with the outcome, this will make it simple for you to return to the original code and start again.