Title: Cannot edit header.php file in theme editor
Last modified: August 21, 2016

---

# Cannot edit header.php file in theme editor

 *  [MisterZookeep](https://wordpress.org/support/users/misterzookeep/)
 * (@misterzookeep)
 * [12 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-edit-headerphp-file-in-theme-editor/)
 * I searched the forums and tried several solutions for this problem, none of which
   worked. Every other file or template in the theme loaded in the theme editor 
   pane. I could edit the file via FTP, but when I opened it in the WordPress theme
   editor, that file was blank. If I saved the blank file, header.php on the server
   was blank – which of course means the site loads without header content.
 * Proposed solutions included update parts of tinyMCE, reload theme-editor.php 
   from a clean download, check CHMOD to verify the file is set at 644. None of 
   those worked in my case.
 * I also pasted the text from header.php into a clean file in a different text 
   editor, and uploaded that. Same result – blank header.php in WordPress theme 
   editor. I opened header.php in a text editor via FTP client and it was all there.
 * The same header.php file worked on other sites – just not on this latest install.
   Finally, I tried the simplest, obvious solution. I pasted contents of the header.
   php I’d uploaded by FTP into the WordPress theme editor loaded with the mysteriously
   blank header.php file and saved it. Voila! It loads as required.
 * I didn’t pursue any more forensic analysis to see why WordPress would not load
   that particular file. I did think it might be helpful to anyone with a similar
   problem to make a note here of the solution that worked in my case.

The topic ‘Cannot edit header.php file in theme editor’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [cannot edit](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/cannot-edit/)
 * [header.php](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/header-php/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [MisterZookeep](https://wordpress.org/support/users/misterzookeep/)
 * Last activity: [12 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-edit-headerphp-file-in-theme-editor/)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics