Creating your Own little WordPress Playground
One of the most common things you will learn to hate about designing ANY type of website, is that you have to test your work, before taking it to the live environment. You guessed it… this means doing work twice! This is also one of the best practices you will use as you are learning, as it gives you open reign to do anything you want, without ever effecting your main website! Just imagine… you found “This Great New Thing” for your site and once you install it, you find that it took down your entire website! Believe me… I’ve been there, even with simple plugin installs!
Heck, I even have a beta environment for this website… http://beta.thenichestorebuilder.com It’s the area I use for template changes, plugin testing etc.
If I had a dollar for every email I have recieved from readers who wrote: I just installed “this plugin” or “that plugin” and now my site doesn’t work anymore!!… I would be a that much closer to my dream house!
Create a Beta Environment for Testing Purposes
After you have created your main website and installed WordPress through Fantastico, go back into your cPanel and add a new “Subdomain” (NOT Add-On Domain) to your account. You can name it anything you want… I chose beta for my own. The new subdomain will carry your main domain in the url structure and end up like: testing.mydomain.com or in my case, beta.mydomain.com .
After your subdomain is created, switch back over to your Fantastico panel and you guessed it, install a new instance of wordpress to your new subdomain!
Once it is up and running, you will want to spend the 5-10 minutes to setup some mock categories, pages, and a few lorem ipsum posts, so you have content to play around with! Once done, you have a fully working wordpress playground for all your testing purposes!
As you make major or minor changes to your code, you can use this new area to test it all out BEFORE applying it to the live website!
What to Use it for
As we progress through the remainder of this week and month, there are going to be opportunities for you to choose templates, install plugins, make minor code changes etc. Having the ability to do it in a closed and non-indexed environment is priceless and much more forgiving if you happen to take the entire site down due to a missing ; or “, or even using a plugin designed for an older version of WP.
Mark
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Creating Grill Auction Category Tree
- Creating a Niche Specific Category Structure – Part 1
- Creating a Niche Specific Category Structure – Part 2
Rate This Post
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
I knew it was going to come down to this… I HATE doing this stuff!! But I know it has to be done. :(
What about security for this beta subdomain? Does it have its own login, or some other way of keeping it secure? Like maybe just the WP login you get with it, will that be enough? I’ve never had any experience with these, so inquiring minds want to know.
I never play online. I like to spend my time testing new themes on my local wampserver instead working online. I can save a lot of time without uploading files…
Yeah – WAMP is the way to go!
Here Here
WAMP has saved me from doing stupid things to my site.
I just wish there were an easy way to completely develop a WP site and then just export it to my hosting service.
Jeff
Great idea!
Mac users can use MAMP – the Mac equivalent of WAMP.
Free, easy to set up and very useful as a test-bed.
James
Mark,
A couple of points. If you get a build that you like for wordpress you can always copy the environment and have a back up database that you can restore into a new Database. This will save a ton of time, having all of your plugins uploaded when you do the initial FTP upload. I do this instead of Fantastico as it takes many of the steps out of the process.
Also, make sure you back up your wordpress db regularly, or have the backup plug in activated. If you screw up, it takes much of the pain out of the process.
I have been using wordpress since 2004 and it is one of my best friends, but I have had db’s corrupt for no reason at all and not having a good backup is painful.
Tom
OMG is that one freaking house!
Can’t believe its got its own website, might do that for my house :)
LOL – It is actually the BIGGEST privately owned home in the USA.
The Biltmore Estate…. Yup, owned by the Vanderbilt family. Just as an FYI for those who didn’t know… Anderson Cooper (From CNN) is one of the remaining Vanderbilt decendants, son of Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper.
Elijah – When you come to Ashville next year – make sure you visit this place!
Mark
Dude! That’s way too much of a dream house. At least I wouldn’t see my mother in law anymore (unfortunately she lives with me – both good and bad, sigh!), we’d be lost in that thing (at least she would be.)
Are You Too Set In Your Ways?
Site Categories
Monthly Archive
My Favorite Places
Blogging Sites
Blogroll
Places I Write
Technology Sites
Site Credits
Niche Store Builder is powered by WordPress, using a modified theme originally inspired by Arthemia.
Home | About | Terms & Privacy