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.
I’m not a developer and fairly new user to WP. We have a WP temporary site up that is live, and found a new theme that we are going to customize for our site. Question is – is there an easy way to work on & customize our new WP theme site without disrupting the live WP site? And an easy way to flip the switch on the new one when we’re ready?
thx
Kai, that is a perfect use for this plugin. The Theme Test Drive plugin mentioned in this article has been updated to be compatible with the latest WP version.I recommend installing this plugin to use in your testing process.
Viewing the new theme just requires adding a parameter to your site’s URL in the browser’s address bar, or you can use the admin options to preview it (Go to Admin Panel, Design, Theme Test Drive, and then select the theme you want to preview and click enable). The selected theme will be visible only to blog administrator, while other visitors of the blog will always see the existing theme. Once you have your new theme the way you want it, then activate it as the new theme in your admin section.