Just a Few Steps

The only thing you need to do for this to work is installing the Theme Test Drive. There is a different way of seeing how your site would look like in a new a new theme, by the way. All you need to do is navigate to the Theme you would like to preview in your Theme menu and right click the link that says Preview and in the following menu you select Open in New Tab (or whatever similar your browser provides you). A new tab will open in browser showing you what your site looks like sporting the new Theme. This is however not a solid solution when it comes to testing the different pages and using widgets for example.

After having installed and activated Theme Test Drive plugin you will see an extra menu in Appearance which allows you to select what Theme you would like to test drive. By enabling the Theme of preference and selecting the proper user level, in other words should only admins be able to see the new Theme?

And We’re Done Already

All there is left for you to do is navigate to your site by clicking Visit Site in the top of your WordPress Dashboard and there you have it. The beauty of this solution is that it allows you to treat this new Theme as if though it would actually be live and that means you also have a new set of sidebars where you need to configure your widgets to get the result you’re looking for.

When you want to make adjustments to your currrent Theme, simply download a copy to your computer via FTP, rename the folder and adjust the Header part of your style.css with a higher version number, save it and upload it to your themes directory. In effect changing it from something like this:

/*
	Theme Name: Your Theme
	Theme URL: http://www.themeurl.com/
	Description: Your Current Rocking Theme
	Author: Remkus de Vries
	Author URI: http://remkusdevries.com
	Version: 1.0
*/

to

/*
	Theme Name: Your Theme
	Theme URL: http://www.themeurl.com/
	Description: Your New Rocking Theme
	Author: Remkus de Vries
	Author URI: http://remkusdevries.com
	Version: 2.0
*/

Now select the higher version of your current theme in the Theme Test Drive menu. That’s it. Happy fiddling!

Note: Even though this a great way to change a few things here and there, I do recommend setting up a proper copy of your site in, for instance a subdomain combined with a plugin like Maintenance Mode, when you are really getting your hands dirty.

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Working Behind the WordPress Curtains

Working on Your WordPress Site Behind The Curtains is a post from: ForSite Media

Now a while back this would’ve not been the most interesting problem in need of a solution, but since WordPress is being used as CMS more and more and thus only using static pages, a proper solution is in need.

The two solutions, in the shape of plugins, I have used for this on a couple of recent projects I did are the following are the following:

RSS Includes Pages

This plugin modifies your RSS feeds so that they include pages and not just posts. Including pages in your feed is particularly useful if you’re using WordPress as a CMS where pages represent a good portion of your content.

Find out more at the plugin’s page.

Page Feeder

Page Feeder lets you easily create and customise an RSS feed for your pages. Customize your feed using the settings page or via URL parameters. This plugin is great for those who use WordPress as a CMS solution and is my personal favorite.

Find out more at the plugin’s page.

So there you have two solid solutions on using your WordPress as a static page only CMS. How many times have you used WordPress with static pages only?

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: How To Use RSS Feeds When You Use WordPress As a CMS

Adding Pages to Your RSS Feed in WordPress is a post from: ForSite Media

When I say sidebars, I don’t necessarily mean sidebars. Widget areas are of course not limited to the visual sidebars in a theme. Most themes have one or two sidebars and a matching 1 or two widget areas, but some themes have just two sidebars, but a total of 13 widget area’s.

The problem, even with two sidebars, is that you have very little control over which widget goes on what page or post.. or category or archive even. Luckily there are two plugins that can help us out here. Widget Logic and Section Widget. Both widgets do pretty much the same thing, be it that Section Widget is a lot easier to use when you’re not very familiar with Conditional Tags.

Widget Logic

Widget Logic gives every widget an extra control field called ‘Widget logic’ that lets you control the pages that the widget will appear on.

There is also an option to add a wordpress ‘widget_content’ filter — this lets you tweak standard widgets to suit your theme without editing plugins and core code. Do check out the FAQ for this plugin for extra insight on how to use this plugin.

Section Widget

Ever wanted to display a widget only on the front page? Subpages of certain pages? Posts with a certain tag? Section Widget‘s got that covered. With a very easy to use interface, you can create your section-specific widget in no time – without going through the frustration of writing PHP code.
In addition to plain text and HTML, Section Widget has also made it possible to use shortcodes in your widgets.

On top of that Section Widget adds a tabs functionality to the equation which is really helpful to keep your sidebar less cluttered. It even comes with 25 bundled themes. No wonder Section Widget won the WordPress Plugin Competition in 2009.

How to Have Even More Fun With Widgets Areas

The two afore mentioned widgets let you be very creative in what type of content you want to display in on which type of page, but there are a few more specific plugins I want to run by you. These plugins do different things, but all of them are perfect when you need them. Combined they make for the most flexible widget experience possible.

Exec-PHP

Exec-PHP allows you to execute PHP code in the excerpt and the content portion of your posts and pages and your widgets. Using this plugin should be done by someone who knows what he’s doing with PHP and that’s why you can restrict  the execution of PHP code to certain users by using roles and capabilities.

WYSIWYG Text Widget

The WYSIWYG Text Widget allows you to do with text widgets what you do when writing posts and pages.  This means you can add colors, links, and even images to your sidebar without knowing code.

Tabbed Widgets

A different version to the Tabs used by Section Widgets is Tabbed Widgets. Tabbbed Widgets lets you use other widgets for the tab content and specify a custom tab title. Other features are:

• Make tabs rotate in a set interval so that they become more noticeable and prominent.
• Set a random start tab on each page load so that all tabbed content gets equal exposure.
• Make unlimited number of tabbed widgets that can be then used as regular widgets via the Widgets menu.

Widgets Reloaded

The default WordPress widgets don’t offer much control over how they are output on the screen. Widgets Reloaded is was created by Justin Tadlock to take of any shortcomings the default widgets might have .

Widgets Reloaded replaces many of the default widgets with versions that allow much more control. Widgets come with highly customizable control panels. Each widget can also be used any number of times. The following widgets are replaced: Archives, Authors, Bookmarks (Links), Calendar, Categories, Pages, Search and Tags.

Query Posts

This last widget I’d like to mention is called Query Posts. Also created by Justin it alllows users that don’t know their way around PHP to easily show posts in any way they’d like. It’s like having a cool WordPress developer as a friend ready to do your bidding.

The widget has over 40 options to choose from. You can list posts by category, tag, custom taxonomies, author, date, time, name, or anything you can imagine. You can choose to show the full content, excerpts, or even a simple list. You can order the posts in all sorts of ways. You can even show pages.

So there you have it. A list full list of plugins to suit your every widget need. I’m curious to learn what widget area enhancing plugins you use I haven’t mentioned here. Do tell!

This article first appeared on BloggingPro:How to Create the Most Flexible Widget Areas in Your Sidebars

How To: Create More Flexible Widgets is a post from: ForSite Media

Whatever the reason may be, the solution needs to be more than just going to Settings, Privacy and select I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.

The Absolute Privacy plugin by John Kolbert does exactly what it the title suggests; it turns your blog into the ultimate private blog and it’s not shy in features too:

• Prevent subscribers from viewing admin pages (like their profile page and the dashboard)
• Complete customization of notification emails
• Redirect non-logged in visitors to either the login page or a custom post/page!
• Allow access to specific posts or pages for non-logged in users
• Full RSS privacy control! Disable completely, enable completely, limit to headlines only, or limit to a specific number of characters

John recently added the Full RSS privacy control and that really makes this plugin a must-have for any WordPress site you want to keep hidden from the general public. To get a good grasp of what this plug-in can do for you can watch the following video review:

Now, the next time you want to use a public domain to discuss your plans for the upcoming weekend with your friends, but don’t want everybody listening in, use Absolute Privacy.

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Do You Need Absolute Privacy?

In Need for Absolute Privacy for WordPress? is a post from: ForSite Media