Setting up a demo WordPress installation in order to provide a Live Preview of your new theme is a mind-numbingly dull task. Thankfully, a few developers have realised this and released files to help speed up this process. These two files are a must-have for ThemeForest WordPress developers.

Sample WordPress Content

The guys at WP-Candy have an XML file to import straight into your new WordPress install, creating:

  • Multiple posts with different elements in each
  • 12 Posts to force pagination
  • Blockquotes, lists - ordered and unordered - and floating images
  • Comments on a few of the posts
  • Parent, child, and grandchild categories and pages
  • Tags
  • Multiple months for the archives

Simply upload the file into WordPress via ‘Manage -> Import’; and you have sample content to display how all elements of your theme appear.

Read More: “Easier Theme Development with Sample WordPress Content”

Theme Switcher Plugin

This plugin allows you use multiple themes on one install of WordPress. Once installed, you can include a drop-down menu on each theme for quick switching, or you can link directly to the theme, by adding the following to the end of the URL:

?wptheme=THEMENAME

Perfect for providing a Live Preview for your ThemeForest item! Thanks to Simnor on the Forums for telling us about this!

Read More: “ThemeSwitcher - WordPress Plugin”

I hope this post was of help to some of you. I just wish I knew about these earlier, before I spent hours creating dummy installs!

Comments

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  1. This is going to be so useful…thanks for sharing!

  2. Thank you…I’m going to submit my first Wordpress theme soon and this is going to help a bunch!

  3. I use the ThemeSwitcher and just link my live previews to the theme switcher URL (www.url.com/?wptheme=ThemeName)

    It’s a huge time saver!

  4. This ThemeSwitcher was just the thing so that the users of the intranet I built could choose their own look–I simply put a framework theme in place with several child themes in different colors. How do I set a cookie so that the switcher will remember what the person chose?

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