Are ThemeForest's themes "infected" or something like that?

aspe_heat

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Hey everyone,

I bought a new theme for my website from ThemeForest four months ago and it had one problem - author archives were not working at all and my authors wanted to have their own pages to show off their work. I contacted theme designer and he said that he will fix it. Four months later, he still hasn't done anything about it.

I went to the marketplace, gave him 1-star rating and after a few hours, my website went to hell. It is not reading external CSS, it's loading slowly and I can't do ANYTHING in admin panel, it always returns me to a white screen. For example, I input some text or activate a plugin, and instead of refreshing the page and saying "The plugin has been activated", all I get is a white screen.

It's annoying and my writers can't post ANYTHING. Is there any way he can control the theme remotely and ruin my website like that? I haven't gotten any sleep last night, still trying to fix it but no damn luck...
 
Only the free ones that have been cracked are infected. The bought ones are perfectly fine.
 
^ What Jimmy said.

If you legitimately purchased the theme, then I don't think this is related at all.

Is it possible that you made any changes during the last few days and something accidentally broke? Or did you try to update any plugins?
 
A theme author has a lot of ways to be malicious if he wants to, so yes, it could be possible. Or it could be a coincidence. No way of knowing without seeing the code.
 
I have bought a themeforest theme that had malware in it. Not to the extent that my site was remote accessed....I think the developer was just very sloppy. For that reason I dont buy themes off new developers or themes that only have a handful of sales racked up.
 
A theme author has a lot of ways to be malicious if he wants to, so yes, it could be possible. Or it could be a coincidence. No way of knowing without seeing the code.

Would you like to add on what how or where to look for malicious codes?

You think anti-malware can help in detecting.
 
I had the same thing testing 2 free ones yesterday. I changed all plugins, access and played with the code a little then gave up. It has something to do with the wpbakery install that comes with most of their themes.. I maybe wrong.
 
Would you like to add on what how or where to look for malicious codes?

You think anti-malware can help in detecting.

Unless you 're a programmer, your best bet is to use plugins like the one W130SN suggested.
 
I've bought multiple themes on ThemeForest, but never had this happen to me. It's definitely possible for him to have added malware to the theme, but it's so unlikely. Are you sure it's not just a host problem?
 
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