Website Development

Using Preview To Modify WordPress Themes Without Breaking Live Sites

Did you know that WordPress lets you preview themes without switching to them? When you’re on the administration tab with your available themes, clicking on the big icons shows how your site would look using that theme. It’s probably in the documentation but I discovered it when I moved the mouse over an icon. The URL started with http://my-wordpress-site/?preview just like when you previewing an unpublished post or page.

I thought of a good use for it. You could use this feature to test changes to your current theme without potentially breaking a live site. What I do now when I want to tinker with a theme is make a copy of that theme, make some changes to the copy, and use the preview feature to navigate the site using that modified theme. When everything looks right then you can just switch to that theme.

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Not breaking WordPress sites as much.