# Adapt github changes to my own site **URL:** \ **Category:** Product Support\ **Created:** [March 26, 2018, 6:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/adapt-github-changes-to-my-own-site/83832 "2018-03-26T06:35:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![jomaxro](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jomaxro/32/126216_2.png) [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/adapt-github-changes-to-my-own-site/83832/5 "2018-03-27T17:22:21Z")
Like @tophee said, plugins do not need to be complicated. Here’s another really simple plugin you can look at (this one increases the maxiumum value allowed in a site setting): [GitHub - jomaxro/discourse-plugin-site-setting-override · GitHub](https://github.com/jomaxro/discourse-plugin-site-setting-override). * * * Let me speak from personal experience about why modifying source code is a bad idea. Before working for Discourse I worked for a company that used Discourse internally. They had linked it to a WordPress install, and instead of using the API to connect WP to Discourse they decided to add a custom route to Discourse. They did this by copying the `routes.rb` file, adding the new route, and then overwriting the `routes.rb` file any time Discourse updated. As new routes were added by Discourse they were “removed” by the modified `routes.rb` file that was overwriting it. Eventually the homepage route was modified and we overwrote it on update, causing Discourse to frequently throw errors. The file was modified in mid-2016. We started seeing errors in mid-2017. It took nearly a week to track down the cause of the errors, because we assumed something had changed _recently_, not something that hadn’t been touched in a year. **tl;dr:** Don’t modify files directly. Even if they don’t hurt you today they can come back and bite when you least expect it. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/adapt-github-changes-to-my-own-site/83832)._