How To Edit WordPress Themes and Code

Hi there @mfuggz,

Once you have WordPress installed it will be installed on the server itself, so you will be able to access your WordPress installation via your browser and edit your site via your wp-admin area from any computer.

The installation will basically be on your DigitalOcean server and all you would need to access your WordPress site is a web browser like Firefox for example.

Regarding editing your theme, there are a few ways to do it:

• If it is sufficient you could just use the customizer that comes from the theme and modify your theme via the WordPress admin area
• If you need to actually make changes to the theme code, then you could use SFTP and edit your theme files and modify the code directly.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby

Hi @mfuggz,

Let’s start from the beginning, as soon as you install a wordpress website, it will be on your server. The files will be there as well as the database. Any edits you want the world to see will need to be done there. I’ll start answering your questions as you’ve asked them:

1. As long as you have a way to authenticate to your server either via a public key added or via a password and you haven’t disabled your SSH port you would be able to. Having said that, it’s best to deny any password authentication and don’t allow your SSH port to be accessible publicly. The best practice would be to use one computer.

2. You can edit the files as you like and whichever is easiest for you. You can edit them directly on the server or edit them locally and then upload them via FileZilla or another program.

3. Editing your own theme can mean two things mostly. The first would be to edit the theme via WordPress’s admin area. The second would be to edit it directly in the files. Usually, you would do the first rather than the second option I described.

Regards, KFSys

@mfuggz:

1. If you followed the tutorial above, I assume that you created a DigitalOcean server (droplet) with the latest Ubuntu version, and you have installed WordPress on that server, not on your computer. Depending on how you have configured SSH access, you can log in to the Ubuntu server from your computer or any computer. The most convenient method is using only your computer to log in and manage your Ubuntu server over SSH.
2. You can directly modify your WordPress plugins and themes in the WordPress Dashboard. After logging in to your WordPress admin account, navigate to the Plugins Editor Screen or the Appearance Editor Screen to start editing.
3. If you coded your WordPress theme from scratch, then it is your own theme. In your case, I guess you are using the default theme that came with WordPress or a free/paid theme from somewhere. It’s not your own theme, but you can still modify its code files. Later, however, if you update it, WordPress will replace your modified files with the new version of those same files. That means any changes you made will disappear.

To set up and manage your websites on a server environment, you should have a basic understanding of how Linux works. You can read the Introductory Topics of this great course: Making Servers Work: A Practical Guide to Linux System Administration