Are you starting a new blog and want to build a career in the blogging world? And you choose a WordPress CMS for blogging? And now you want to design your WordPress site or improve SEO using premium plugins and looking for nulled themes and plugins? This article will discuss the dangers of using nulled themes and plugins whenever possible you don’t have those items installed.
What Are Nulled Themes And Plugins?
Nulled themes or plugins are pirated versions of premium themes which are illegally available on the internet. Some websites provide this plugin for free and others for a small fee. So you can use these plugins and themes and enjoy all the premium features.
Some people distribute these themes on their websites, telegram groups and other social media platforms. According to the website, WordPress is an open source platform, and its themes and plugins are under the GPL or General Public License. Under this license, you can create, modify and distribute any WordPress theme or plugin.
Website Security
Nothing is free in this world. There is a hidden motto behind everything in the world. So why do some people work so hard to decode themes? Every theme or plugin developer gives their best to protect the work.
But people are wasting time, cracking apps, and providing hundred dollar themes or plugins for free.
Have you ever thought why they do it? For example, they may be responsible for their work. Or include malicious code and give away the software for free. And the websites they use will pay them back.
If you use a nulled theme or plugin, you will never know that the website is under the control of a third party because hackers will not take over in the early stages.
Case Study: One of my friends, who started blogging with me, uses a pirated theme on his WordPress site. He works in the educational niche. One day he called me and asked for help. On the site, there is some adult content posted.
Suspicious blog posts are visible to users, but no blog posts when we log in to the dashboard. Then I logged into the database, and it’s hard to find the infected part of the database. It took almost more than 8 hours to remove the malicious code from the website.
The problem here is that Google indexes every post from that website within 5 minutes of publishing it. Now Google may consider the website no longer providing quality content, resulting in a decrease in PageRank or Website Authority.
User Privacy At Risk
You are putting your website at risk by using nulled software and website users. For example, for a typical blog, you could collect users’ email addresses to provide them with a valuable service. But in parallel, the nulled theme gets rid of all these email contacts.
For WooCommerce websites, the situation is even worse. Malicious software can retrieve card information and can make payments without permission.
Dangerous For SEO
When you use nulled themes or plugins, they can change important features of the plugin or theme. As there may be defined conditions for organic traffic. It may ask visitors to turn on notifications for your website and notify the creator of the canceled theme.
The software generates malicious links in content to drive traffic away from your website. You may or may not detect the link, but sooner or later, Google detects the link and penalizes the website by de-indexing it.
- You may lose your article ranking
- Infected software may generate unknown or malicious external links in blog posts
- Users can redirect to other websites
- May cause slow website speed
Search engines like Google and Bing quickly detect such activity and lower your website ranking or remove your website from search results.
It may take months to regain the same ranking position, or sometimes you have to start a new blog from scratch.
No Update From Developer
A nulled theme or plugin cannot get updates from the developer. And if there are important security updates, you may miss them, leading to website hacks or malfunctions. Some websites include updates for one year or for life. But who can you trust?
If everyone downloads the canceled version of the app, the developer doesn’t get the expected results. In such cases, the developer can leave the project.
When to Use a Nulled Theme or Plugin?
You may not use nulled products on your website. But there are some conditions under which you can use a nulled theme or plugin; this is
If the developer doesn’t provide a free or trial version of the software, you can use the nulled product to check how the product can help.
You should use such a product on localhost when designing your website.
Please note that you can use such products on offline projects like WordPress but not on live projects as canceled products may include viruses or suspicious code and be injected in live projects. And if you’re using canceled products on an offline project, please delete all those items before going live.