Are we not allowed to test themes anymore?
-
It’s been a while since I’ve changed a theme to my sites. In the past I remember being able to test the theme on my site without having to officially activate it. It would give me a good idea of how my site would look in the theme. I cannot find this option anymore. Was it taken off? Seems like a pretty no-brainer user-friendly feature.
To clarify, I’m not talking about the live demo. It does not help me to see a completely different site in the theme. Thanks!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Hi, I couldn’t agree with you more.
You can (sort of) Preview your content in a new theme from the WP Admin Appearance>Themes dashboard. If you are in the Default Appearance Themes dashboard, click on the VIEW tab in the upper right corner of the screen and switch to “Classic.”
Let me know if you have any other questions about this.
-
Hi there,
It’s not about not being allowed. Rather, the new block themes being built for WordPress now work completely differently than themes used to work in the past, and they simply don’t work with the Try & Customize feature that is available for older, classic themes, as block themes don’t use the Customizer any more.
As an alternative, I recommend you create a new, private site in your account, and import some of your content to that site. Then you can use it as a test site to try out new themes without it affecting your actual site. (Personally I’ve always preferred this method for testing out new themes over the Try & Customize feature, as it gives me a much more complete feel for the theme.)
-
Ah, but @kokkieh we do have the Customizer here on WordPress.com, even for themes that use full site editing. (I asked about this a few weeks back while wearing one of my other account hats.)
As a final check I do export some content (last 6 months) and some pages into a test site, but to quickly narrow down the list of possible candidates, I use the Customizer.
additional 2¢/I think WordPress.com (let alone .org) may have overlooked that not everyone has the time, inclination or design chops, to completely design their site from a base theme. Even the current crop of new demo sites doesn’t show what a theme is capable of doing./additional 2¢
-
-
I’ve been playing with the editor on a test site. Ideally, I wanted to duplicate my site to a private one to test but I can’t find that feature. Now the challenge is making the change. It would be helpful if there was a site staging option so we wouldn’t have to publish every time we save before it’s finished. The editor takes time and no one wants to show visitors a half-finished site. =/
Thank you for your response!
-
Hi @studio17soleil, totally understandable. You can use the export and import tools to copy the site content. The theme and customizations won’t be transferred over, but the content will:
https://wordpress.com/export/
https://wordpress.com/import/And @justjennifer, clarifying: you can still technically access the Customizer with Full Site Editing themes, but you wouldn’t use the customizer to modify them, as that requires the Site Editor.
-
The theme and customizations won’t be transferred over, but the content will
Help us understand the process here.
If we export some content from the original site to a test site in order to test/preview/customize an FSE theme, how can we transfer those customizations back to the original site?
It does seem extraordinary that we need to make FSE customizations on a live site.
-
If we export some content from the original site to a test site in order to test/preview/customize an FSE theme, how can we transfer those customizations back to the original site?
You can’t at this point.
We have several teams working at making this possible on WordPress.com, but it’s not a simple thing to implement, and we don’t have an ETA on when it will be possible to migrate templates between sites.
- The topic ‘Are we not allowed to test themes anymore?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 