My opinion is that if it is a “built in” theme editor, it is not necessarily always safe. Editing theme files from within WordPress requires that the files being edited, be writable. That’s ok as long as you change the permissions back when you are finished. But how many people actually do? I use Notepad++ almost exclusively on my Windows desktops. It is fast and efficient. I am not aware of any such plugin additions to the WordPress Theme Editor feature. I think generally speaking, most people might discourage its use just from a security standpoint. There are of course, always exceptions.
We agree again … except I use EditPad Classic for all my coding, etc. Actually – i use it for about everything and have for years.
Thank you guys for your reply.
I am just curious to know if you do actually download the files from WP to your computer and then Edit and upload it back manually? Does any of the tools that you use have a built-in FTP facility which automatically uploads it when you finish editing?
I am fine with using a 3rd party FTP app (like FileZilla) but was wondering if there is a better way to do it.
I don’t download them each time I edit. I keep an extracted set of my WP install on my system and make what changes I want to various files, after keeping backups of styles.css and sidebar.php. I crank up ftp and rename the current version of the file I just changed – just in case – and upload the revised version, which has the proper name. Simple.
If it’s a relatively minor change to something I just edit from the theme editor.
