Wordpress Theme Editing

[mark87]

This may sound rather stupid but how do I edit a theme, but so only I can see the changes until I'm happy with it? ie. Leave the current one there for now.

Or even just close the page for a while, but still allow me to make and see changes?

[vinyl-junkie]

I don't know anything about Wordpress, but I suspect that changing its theme would really be no different than the way you would go about changing your website's template. Just make a test folder on the server, load Wordpress into that folder, point any includes or whatever to that folder, then start playing around with the theme. When you get it the way you want it, make the appropriate changes to the production version of Wordpress.

[mark87]

I can create my own theme (I've done it before, and this time I just copied and renamed the default one), but I can't see how I can see a preview of how it would look after editing it, without actually publishing it! I'm sure there must be a way...

Loading Wordpress into a new folder would work but seems like it could be a bit of a pain.

[vinyl-junkie]

Loading Wordpress into a new folder would work but seems like it could be a bit of a pain.
Yep, I suspect that could be a bit of bother. I wonder though if it might be a little less painful using CVS (Concurrent Versions System). I've never used such a system, but there's an excellent article on how to set it up in this newsletter (http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=130). Hope it helps.

[mark87]

Thanks for the help but I don't want to be messing around installing new stuff etc.

I think I'll just rename the folder, and create a placeholder for the time being saying it's under maintenance!

[ronaldb66]

Mark,

To see how it actually looks online would involve a quick theme change, checking the results and swiftly switching back to the previous stable theme if it's not what you want. A bit of a pain, I know.

For stylesheet development I copied the main page at some stage as plain HTML; at least you can work on the stylesheet locally until everything looks about right before trying it online. Other pages besides the main page would need to be checked in advance too, though.

I tried to set up a local version of WP, but Firepages' phpdev package just wouldn't run properly on Win XP.

[mark87]

Thanks, I got it done in the end - just went for it and got the majority of it done in less than 2 hours.

I would've thought WordPress would have included a better method of editing and previewing templates before applying but I guess not!