Howto : Decrypt Wordpress Footer
I Googled and found some websites that offered help through a decrypt.php file which was capable of decrypting the footer. I tried decrypting my footer but the process failed. I lack patience to post messages on forum and wait for an answer. I need instant results so I tried using a footer.php file from a different unencrypted template. The result was not bad but not how it originally looked. I lived with it for a while before I thoughtfully screamed Eureka. I had found a simple way to do it and the decrypter was with me all along.
The decrypter is none other than your browser itself. Your browser decrypts the footer when it displays the webpage, so solution is readily available to use. I use Firefox and I would recommend you use the same as well. Reasons for doing so have been provided in my earlier articles and will provide some more later on when the time is ripe.
Here are the steps in bullets to decrypt an encrypted footer:
- Install the encrypted template on your blog and open your blog home page in Firefox
- Click on View and then Page Source; alternatively you can just hit Ctrl+U
- A new window opens up with a bunch of html code in it
- Scroll down to the end of the code page and your sidebar code is easily recognizable. You can easily identify some text that resides on your sidebar.
- Copy the code starting from </div> when your sidebar ends until </html> which is the latest line of your source code.
- Replace the contents in your footer.php file with the copied code and check the output
- If the copied version doesn’t resemble the original, go back to your footer.php and remove the top most line. Check if it brings your blog back to original shape. Follow this process until you find a favorable result by deleting the top most line.
- Result is guaranteed but it may take some time for you to tweak by trial and error method.
Reading through my article, it feels like there’s more history to it than the actual stuff. Sorry to bore you with my experience but it’s necessary to get the context before the actual meat.
If you face issues in decrypting the footer of your template, leave me a message along with the url.
*** UPDATE ***
Codex has a better and sophisticated process than mine. Here’s their method:
How to get rid of encoding in a theme’s footer?
Some theme authors embed links in an encoded footer making it difficult to understand what is happening in the footer. Note: this type of encoded content could be malicious as well as just a copyright banner! Here’s a method to decode (figure out) and correct the footer so there is no encoding.
In your index.php find the line that says <?php get_footer(); ?>. Above and below it add marker text like this:
<!-- Evil Footer Devil FOUND -->
<?php get_footer(); ?>
<!-- Evil Footer Devil BEGONE -->
Now visit your blog, view source (e.g. View->Page Source in Firefox), and copy the HTML between those two markers. Rename your footer.php and make a new copy of footer.php with that HTML code. Then change it to your hearts content. Remember to insert the <?php wp_footer(); ?> before </body> tag.
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Hey.. ive discussed this on my blog too.. with an easier method!
Hey Messy Designer,
Your blog was the first place which I checked out for decrypting my footer but your solution did not work.
It’s good that it didn’t work, that led me to finding an easier way of decrypting it myself along with the credit. :)
abhinav
abhi, the method i specified works!
the procedure you discussed in your post, is (I guess) not for eval encrypted code which is the mostly used encrypting method for securing footers. You are lucky enough to get a template with html footer and plain (understandable) coding..
thanks for a help – worked fine for me, tried to decrypt it before, but no luck :)
You method works and I just removed 4 links from the footer that went to some strange websites. My computer kept warning me of encrypted and malicious files when I put the wordpress theme up. Now there is no problem. Thanks a bunch.
OMG this is genius. I tried this at first, and it didn’t work for me, it was out of line at the bottom and I got irritated, then I looked for other themes, hating to leave the one I worked on for a while as you did. Then I decided to try again because some of the other “free” themes were encrypted. Then I found you and yes its simple so I tried again and my only problem was that i didnt have a tag in place as you noted.
Thanks!!!!
I tried this and it did work. Only thing is.. my “latest blog posts” show up in my footer as well. So that no longer updates. any thoughts?
Kenny,
The only thing I can conclude is that you have replaced a wrong . Try doing this exercise again and it will work.
How do you decrypt the index.php in a woo theme?
Why do you have to decrypt index.php? I do not think that is encrypted. If it is encrypted, can you email me the file?
Im getting the same problem as ikenny, i have quite abit of stuff happening in my footer, such as latest posts, flickr etc, so when i follow these steps it copys the code from these, so when i get new posts etc, it dousent upgrade, just simply says the same number or images etc.. ps, thanks for this anyhow, if it comes to it, i will just have to modify around it :P ps. unsure if he solved his problem because we have the same template by the looks of it lol.