XSS in WordPress Themes: Common Pitfalls and Fixes
WordPress theme code is where a lot of XSS bugs quietly survive for years. I’ve seen the same pattern over and over: the plugin gets blamed, the CMS gets blamed, but the actual issue lives in a theme template that prints user-controlled data with zero escaping. Theme developers often focus on layout, custom fields, menus, search forms, AJAX helpers, and admin options. Security ends up as an afterthought. The awkward part is that WordPress already gives you solid escaping and sanitization APIs. Most theme XSS bugs happen because developers either skip them or use the wrong one in the wrong context. ...