Testing new themes without going online with them.

  • Unknown's avatar
    sbswebboss · Member ·

    I would like to change to another theme, but I don’t want to actually put that new theme online, for the public, until after I’ve had time to customize it so it correctly shows current content. I found some help on how to transition to the new theme and incorporate content while keeping the production version in Draft pages, available to be restored. But, doesn’t doing that really make the new, not ready for primetime theme the version that the public will see for the website? I don’t want that untested version online until sometime after I’ve had a chance to get it looking right.

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

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  • Unknown's avatar
    aisajib · Member ·

    Hi there,

    Yes, changing the theme on a site will cause it to show up to the visitors. So one suggestion we have is to make the site private while you’re working on a redesign.

    If that’s not an option, the alternative is to activate the theme on a different site, customize everything there, and then switch the theme on your main site. This gives you some familiarity with the theme so you can customize the live site with minimal time. (When working on the live site, you can change the site privacy to private.)

    If you’re looking at a premium theme that can’t be activated on a free site, you can purchase the theme on your new site, and cancel it within the refund period to get a full refund.

    Yet another option is to purchase the Premium plan on a new site, export all content from your live site and import it into the new site, and then set up the new theme there. This gives you sort of a staging site to work with. When you’re done working on this site, you can simply move the domain over to the new site.

    While this is an option, it’s worth noting that you’ll lose the site stats if you follow this route, since you’ll technically have a brand new site with the old content and the same domain.

    Please let us know if you have more questions.

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