Have you ever been in a situation when you feel the urge to change pimp your blog with a brand new theme? I have been and I guess it’s the same with everyone else. But then changing a theme can be quiet a pain in the @#%, is it not?
Before I made up my mind on using this awesome theme from Speckyboy, I’ve been going back and forth testing different themes, little did I know that there is an easy way for me to do it behind the scene. I mean it allows me to test any new theme independently while the visitors are still seeing the default one. No more sneaking around, you know what I mean?
How do I preview those WordPress Themes?
Donncha O Caoimh wrote a nice plugin Theme Tester which allows you, the administrator to test and preview any new themes without the visitors to your blog aware of any changes. You could tinker, tweak and do any damage to your new theme to the point where you are completely satisfied with it. When the time for real change, you just need to deactivate the plugin and voila, your brand new theme goes live.
How to install & use Theme Tester?
1. Download Theme Tester plugin.
2. Upload it to wp-content/plugins and activate it.
3. Go to Design > Theme Tester to activate it.
4. Select the theme you want to preview.
5. You’re done and you can switch as many themes as you like.
So the next time you are in the mood to test drive new themes on your blog, preview them with Theme Tester and tinker with it to your heart’s content. It is quite a powerful and useful theme preview tool for both end-users and theme designers. If only I knew it ages ago…
Here’s a preview of my blog using iWPhone theme which is only visible by me.
PS: This blog is iPhone-ready. When you visit my blog from your iPhone, you will be seeing the exact same theme already optimized for iPhone.
Update: Pavel Ciorici from WPZoom has a list of 20 Sites To Find Great WordPress Themes. It’s worth a bookmark.
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About Yan
Hi!
Thanks a lot for mentioning my project ;)
Hey Pavel,
You did a good job in compiling those resources anyway and I think it’s worth a mention. Thanks for dropping by. I’ll see you around.
Thanks.. this is exactly what i was looking for..
@Ikram: Oh, the guy with the Merdeka theme. I really love your blog design. I think you have the in-born talent to be a great designer. I admire your work and talent, to say the least.
When I stumbled upon your blog a couple of weeks ago, I was toying with the idea of some kind of collaboration with you. It just that I haven’t had the time to contact you personally.
PS: How did you come to know of this blog?
hi..
couldn’t really remember, but its definitely from another fellow malaysian blogger.
well, if you have something, do drop me a mail..
cheers.
@Ikram: Will do just that when the time is right. Thanks for dropping by.
Hi Yan!
This pre-testing/adjustment is really important, because one can get into endless delay when tweaking a new theme to get it acceptable, and sometimes a blog can be out of order for hours (weeks??).
Your site is primarily for Noobs, and this is the perfect answer for them. I use Xampp (Unix/Apache/PHP) on my XP box to test and tweak until it is right and THEN upload the new theme to go live with it. There’s the big bonus that all my code files are duplicated on my box and this is an invaluable back-up.
Great to see you have CommentLuv in place and working. I’m sure your more ‘pro’ readers will really appreciate the DoFollow factor of it, and get the benefit of the back-links.
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Yeah it took me almost 2 weeks to finish tweaking this theme to my liking, little did I know that there is an easier way for me to do it.
Glad you share a little about how you did it. It may be of interest to some. I just happen to be in the Mac environment.
Cool; was looking for something like this was working on modifying a theme.
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Oooh. I lmight be able to use this! I’m going to “test” it for sure.
It’s especially useful if you can get more than just a “preview image”, and actually edit and play with it. I usually use a separate “temp domain” to do my customizing before going live. Definitely less hassle this way!
Thanks for the heads up!
Jay
@Jay - Well, I’m not too sure if the plugin is compatible with WP 2.6 or it’s just an isolated case for me. Let me know if it doesn’t, will you?
@ Yan: Worked like a charm for me in WP 2.6, and I’m lovin’ it already. It’s going to save a lot of hassle/time for me and the way I do things.
I was using it with Mac (FF3)
Thanks again for the hot tip!
Jay
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Oh man this is perfect. A bit obsolete w/ 2.6 but it’ll work wonders on my 2.5 blogs.
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Up to now I’ve been running a mirror of my WP sites under a subdomain purely for testing new features and design tweeks.
I’ll definitely be putting this to the test. Thanks.
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