Back in the days when I started building blogs, I made a big (yet common) mistake of modifying WordPress core files.

WordPress core files are essentially all files included in WordPress installation except the ones located in the wp-content folder (and its sub folders).

As an open source CMS, WordPress gives you full access to the core files, which has many upsides of-course (I will not discuss those here though). These files contain built in functions and processes that your blog needs in order to work properly.

But what’s the big mistake? and why would you even want to modify these files in the first place?

core

You would want to (but shouldn’t…) modify core files when you want to change to some built in functions to meet your needs. For example, you might want to change the way WordPress organizes the comments to your posts.

If you know your way in PHP code, you can understand the temptation here. But if you decide to change these files as I once did, you will not be able to upgrade WordPress safely because at least some of these files will be replaced during the upgrade.

This means that all your changes will be lost.

Even if you manage to keep track of all of your changes and restore them after the upgrade, they may not be suitable for the new version of WordPress and can harm your blog functionality badly.

There are much smarter ways to customize your blog – take a look in this article.

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