# Live app code test code modifications not reflected in front-end
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/live-app-code-test-code-modifications-not-reflected-in-front-end/371015
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [June 20, 2025, 11:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/live-app-code-test-code-modifications-not-reflected-in-front-end/371015 "2025-06-20T11:32:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@opcourdis](https://meta.discourse.org/u/opcourdis)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2025, 11:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/live-app-code-test-code-modifications-not-reflected-in-front-end/371015/1 "2025-06-20T11:32:01Z")
Hi,
Coming from developing on joomla/wordpress I am curious over discourse backend file modification functionning through docker.
I have read the documentation on how to create a plugin([How can I make my own Discourse plugins? - #2 by merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-make-my-own-discourse-plugins/90032/2)), but I don’t want to do that yet, I just want to be able to test code live
On a non docker MVC installation, doing a modification on a file via ftp, it was instantly reflected and while with docker I understand the need to rebuild the app to apply permanent modification, what if you want to test things live?
Live test code modifications don’t seem to work :
For example, I want to disable searches for anonymous users so I edited :
/var/www/discourse/app/controllers/search\_controller.rb by adding “if current\_user.present?” after “def show” with an end at the bottom of the function.
I was surprised that this does not have any effect on front end, and even renaming the conrolller to search\_controllerold would not have any effect on the searches.
But somehow, renaming an image in /var/www/discourse/public/images# would hide the image on front-end 🙂 !
Can anyone please tell me how things work here, is there another cached version of the system more than just the app that starts from its image?
Thank you
---
### Author:  [@opcourdis](https://meta.discourse.org/u/opcourdis)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2025, 3:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/live-app-code-test-code-modifications-not-reflected-in-front-end/371015/2 "2025-06-20T15:21:19Z")
Ok, I found that code gets modified if I modify the files in ./javascripts/discourse/node\_modules/.embroider/rewritten-app/
It feels better now 🙂
---
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2025, 3:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/live-app-code-test-code-modifications-not-reflected-in-front-end/371015/3 "2025-06-21T15:06:06Z")
That looks more than an anti-pattern.
That will likely get replaced with every build.
Look at the material in #Documentation > Developer Guides and the countless real open source examples to see how to modify the front end via #Customization > Theme component and both the front and back via #Customization > Plugin
---
### Author:  [@opcourdis](https://meta.discourse.org/u/opcourdis)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2025, 3:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/live-app-code-test-code-modifications-not-reflected-in-front-end/371015/4 "2025-06-21T15:12:42Z")
Thank you for the share ! I will check this and maybe get involved into it more seriously at some point, for the moment I just wanted to test live modifications and don’t get why they don’t show up in front end as easy as it was with an ftp on joomla/wordpress even though I am inside the app.