Posted by Duncan on March 10, 2009 – 11:47 pm
You downloaded a new theme for your Wordpress site, or maybe you got adventurous and built your own theme. You are ready to test it out with your live site data. You could copy your data structure, copy your database, and tweak all of that to make a test site (too involved and complicated). Or, you could rely on the theme preview window before activating it (not enough for a complex site). What about turning on the new theme in the middle of the night when your traffic is low, playing around with it, and then reverting back to your old theme (too old to stay up that late)?
Check out the Theme Test Drive plugin from Vladimir Prelovac. This allows you the blog administrator to give a trial run for any theme while your users view your normal site. If the theme has special configuration options, you can play with those as well. Now you can test drive that fancy new Wordpress theme safely and easily, without a lot of work or a loss of sleep.
I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t know about this seen as I mess around with WP for a living. Thanks for the tip.