testing with new theme without disrupting users

  • Resolved mzimmers

    (@mzimmers)


    14 years, 9 months ago

    Hi –

    Is there a recommended technique for experimenting with a new theme without disrupting users of the site? I’m looking at moving to a new version of a theme that I had to modify a bit, and I’m expecting it’s going to take some time.

    What’s the preferred way of doing this? If it involved duplicating a database, I’d appreciate fairly specific instructions.

    Thank you.

Viewing 8 replies - 31 through 38 (of 38 total)

  • mzimmers: I was put off by the apparent complexity of testing locally, and haven’t yet had a need, but I do agree with theBlackSheep that it really is a simple install (according to everything I’ve read). And I do plan to go that route for any extensive php coding (or even MySQL SELECT queries that could chew up a lot of resources) only because I’m afraid of getting banned from my web host should I repeatedly have runaway tasks.

    BUT, and this is a big BUT, testing locally is only a truly valid test if the software environment is the same (down to the version.release.modification level of each component) as your web hosting environment. And even then, every day I see people tripped up by networking difference between running locally and through the public Internet to your web host.

    well said that man^. there’s a load of info about installing wp locally all over the net and here at wp.org, look into it at the very least.

    Thread Starter mzimmers

    (@mzimmers)

    OK, I may revisit the effort of installing LAMP and WP locally. For now, at least I know there’s another option (the Test Drive plugin). This is good news. Marked resolved.

    @mzimmers “it” is the plugin. You don’t need any pulldown menu. You just activate the plugin and then you can add ?theme=whatever, with “whatever” being the folder name of any theme you have in your /wp-content/themes/ folder, to any URL of your site and you will see your site in that theme.

    You don’t have to look at anything in the WP Dashboard. All you have to do is activate the plugin and then look at your site with the appended URL.

    p.s. Now I know what you mean. There is a way in the plugin’s settings to select ONE theme and then you can see your site in that theme IF you are logged in as an admin, but I never use that. I just append the URL of whatever theme I want to see. I do this b/c I typically develop themes on my own site and I want to see whichever one I want to see, w/o having to go to the admin and select it.

    p.p.s. It’s good to deactivate the plugin when you are not using it so that Google doesn’t somehow index an appended URL and then penalize you for duplicate content. I recently deleted a theme b/c I’m not using it and I could see in my stats that an appended URL keeps showing up. So, somebody’s obviously been hitting my site that way. If the user requests a theme folder name that doesn’t exist, WordPress will display your active theme.

    and hopefully my last post on this… you can also use Canonical tags to prevent Google from indexing the appended URLs. I have my site set up that way.

    I know, I’m obsessed with this topic now… Using the appended URL method is also great when (if) you are looking for work because you can just send links to the prospective client like…

    Here’s your site with my new custom theme: (link)

    or Here’s a site with the stock theme, and here it is again after my modifications…

    You’ll see. It’s very handy.

Viewing 8 replies - 31 through 38 (of 38 total)
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