The topic of this post has caused me much trouble and many searches for guides have yielded few results. I am in the process of changing my blog theme and I have finally figured out how to change themes safely and easily in the background while visitors see the current blog with the old theme intact.
This is awfully helpful as when you are converting themes, no new theme will fit perfe
ctly with old theme tweaks. Existing ads, comment styles, sidebar contents, widgets and other tweaks that we all have done to our blogs along the way, will need to be customized for the new theme. Some themes break everything or most everything and many changes are needed to be made manually and no one wants to do them live while the world is watching 
Step-By-Step Guide to Change Blog Theme in Background
1. Install and activate this plugin: Theme Test Drive
2. Upload new themes that you are interested in, you can get as many as you want to play with.
3. From wp admin go to:
Appearance - Theme Test Drive. From the drop down menu choose the themes you want to preview and hit the Enable Theme Drive Button.
Now when viewing your live blog, you and only you as the admin will see the blog with the theme you selected.
4. Choose your new theme.
5. Check the New Design.
Now you will want to check the new theme for any issues that exist and what maybe missing that was on the old them.
A useful method is to open the live blog in one tab of the browser as well as the theme test drive version with the new theme in another tab and view them side by side.
Look all around the new theme and see what does not look right, check out the Footer, and Header especially since changes to those are usually made in the theme files and will not convert automatically for the new theme.
Make sure your comments look properly with the new theme as those can get weird by the CSS stylesheets in the new theme.
Also any adds, affiliate banners and such that you have manually placed into places like posts, pages and footers, will have to be added to the new theme's files as those will not automatically convert over.
Basically just check everything to see what needs to be edited.
6. Editing New Theme Files.
Now, you can edit all the theme files for the new theme by going to:
Appearance - Editor - Select The New Theme from Drop Down Menu
Caution: make sure you select the new theme and not forget because you can mistakenly start to edit your existing theme files.
You can also make changes to the CSS stylesheet if needed for the new theme. I personally like to tweak fonts and other styles, but this is totally optional.
This will allow you to make all the changes you need to to the new themes files, and remember that you are editing the new theme and it has no effect on the old theme so your live blog remains the same, and you can preview all the edits in the new theme by continuing to enable theme test drive.
7. Editing Sidebar - Widgets
When theme test drive is enabled, the widget area is updated for the new blog. So, if your new theme has any additional sidebars as compared to the old theme it will show those to you in the widget area, even if your original theme only had one.
This is where it gets tricky...
You can edit the second or third sidebar that did not exist in your old theme all you want, however, the sidebar that did exist will still be the one that shows live on the blog and with that one whatever edits you make will also appear on the live blog.
So, the best thing to do is plan out that sidebar on paper or in your head and save that edit for last and just launch the new theme after that.
You can check your blog analytics for the time of day your blog has the least amount of traffic, for most US blogs late at night should be a good time and do it then so you can tweak any issues in that sidebar while little traffic is viewing your blog, overall this is a not a big deal and should go relatively unnoticed.
8. Launch New Theme
When everything is perfect go to:
Appearance - Themes - Select the new theme and make it live!
I will follow up this post with a long list of places to get very nice WP themes free, so stay tuned!
Any questions?
I am developing a new WP website. I will use Theme Test Drive and enable the theme my site will use for the finished website.If I use the default WP theme(which is the live theme) I still see my posts appearing on this theme when I post on my Theme Test Drive enabled theme. Is there a default WP theme that says ” Site under construction” whereby anything I do with my enabled theme will not appear live until I am ready for it to do so.
Your thoughts on this.
David
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@david,
I believe http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/maintenance-mode/ is what you’re looking for. The problem is, you don’t want search engines indexing you like that.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Article Marketing Made Easy
And…..most importantly…..don’t lose your TC widget when you change themes! (LOL)
@Matt
LOL
Wow that really seems easy. I haven’t spent much time on theme tweaking because I didn’t want to screw mine up. I am not very comfortable with theme designs and tweaking yet. This plug in would be good for playing around and learning how to do some things.
Thanks for the heads up.
Andy@ network marketing leadss last blog post..Network Marketing Leads To Build Your Business
I didn’t know such a plugin existed. That is perfect. Thanks.
Another thing to remember is to add your Google analytics code to the new themes footer (I don’t know why but I forget it 70% of the times I change to a new theme).
Mikael @ Retire Richs last blog post..Making Money on the Internet with Adsense
@Mikael
You are totally right, that is why its best to do them side-by-side with tabs in the browser, that way you can check both theme files and make sure you did not leave anything out.
@david,
The posts will always show up whatever theme you have live or in test drive. Is your purpose to prevent any traffic or SE’s that may visit your blog from seeing anything at all? If so, you can just block the SE’s form crawling your site till you are done all together, Go to: Settings – Privacy and select: block SE and SE traffic.
This is the best method to temporarily prevent crawling, indexing and caches.
Does that answer your question? I do not know of a theme that says under construction but you can also write your posts as drafts and not publish them till you are ready to launch and then make a post live that just says UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
Yeehaw! I believe this is exactly what I told you I was looking for.
I’m not too sure on #7 though, I have lots of sidebar tweaks to make.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Business Mentors, Advisers & Coaches
@Dennis Edell,
The sidebar is not that big a deal, just do it late at night, or on a Sunday, I notice my traffic is really low on Sundays. You gotta do what you gotta do, so just make a plan on paper and then just hit launch, and then tweak what you need to. Don’t worry we won’t hate you!
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@JR, So sweet as always *blush*
Dennis Edells last blog post..100 Marketers Give 100 Strategies – Recommended!
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@JR, On second thought, hold off on that…I just sent you another help me email. LOL
Dennis Edells last blog post..100 Marketers Give 100 Strategies – Recommended!
Nice blog ! Thanks
Kevin@Marketings last blog post..Why Use Proximity Marketing ?
Just now downloaded the plugin! I Imagine that i may need to change my theme in the future or tweak it. This plugin will definitely come in handy. Thanks for the heads up!
Sam@Real Online Money Making Strategiess last blog post..Clickbank Affiliate Marketing
It has been a while since I knew about the plugin. I don’t know but I think it was because of the plugin wordpress implemented the theme preview on self hosted wordpress.
Hey JR,
This plugin will definitely come in handy when I’m going to switch my theme in the near future. I’m currently using the same theme you’re using (GlossyBlue), but I did a lot of modifications, so it looks better now.
I’m not a coder myself, so when it comes to modifying a theme, it becomes a headache for me. I’m thinking about switching to a Thesis theme: http://diythemes.com/thesis/ It looks like a very clean and nice theme, yet very customizable for us non-coders.
Tom
What question can be?
Everything described neatly, correct and easily!
I think, that it is very useful plugin
Logica Uspeha@Business Strategys last blog post..??? ????????-??????? – ???? ? ?????????? ????????????? | ?????? ????
Yes I’ve tried this Theme Test Drive before when I changed my blog theme sometime ago and I loved it. It’s quite an intelligent plugin and helps you sleep better knowing that you can take your time in fine tuning the new theme before you hit the published button.
Franck Silvestres last blog post..How Do I Make My Own Website To Start An Online Business
I usually try to make changes to my blog at night to not disturb my visitors. The theme test drive plugin you recommend has been fantastic. Thank you.
hey Thanks for sharing this cool plugin! This is what I’m looking for, I change my blog themes almost every months. My readers will always see what I’m changing because I always edit the code myself, such as inserting ads and so on, so they will see some error some times. Thanks again for sharing this cool plugin!
Regards,
Lee
Make Money Onlines last blog post..How To Get Correct Search Result In Google Search Engine
@Make Money Online,
You are welcome!
I had not spent much time on themes and doesn’t have much knowledge of theme design. These are the good resources that where one can learn these easily. thanks for nice info sharing.
Follow Me on Twitter @: moonheart
(8 comments)
When I change my blog template I also see my blog traffic decreasement and even till now I can not improve my adsense earning.
When I change my template I did not know much about blogging and did not take any precaution.
.-= chandan´s last blog ..What is your link building strategy? =-.
Follow Me on Twitter @: AMater
(11 comments)
Hey JR,
This is exactly what I need! I’m planning a huge overhaul of my current theme, and rather than having all of my changes, errors and glitches live for everyone to see, I think it’s best if everything is done in the background. Thanks for pointing us towards this plug-in. This is going to help me out a lot!
.-= Alan @ Work From Home´s last blog ..June Comment Contest – Win Cash and Prizes! =-.
Your welcome Alan, it’s really a great plugin.
Follow Me on Twitter @: heyecan
(1 comments)
Very nice this plugin
msn show recently posted..Msn Show Sitelerine Kapatma
Sounds interesting. I’ve visited blogs which switched to new themes but never across one which was working on a new theme and still had the old one working as well. Visiting blogs is always a benefiting experience since I get to learn about new things. Posts are also better than press release if we want to know in detail.
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