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!




gnarbury
October 21st, 2008
This is going to be so useful…thanks for sharing!
Nick
October 22nd, 2008
Thank you…I’m going to submit my first Wordpress theme soon and this is going to help a bunch!
Justin Scheetz
October 24th, 2008
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!
Linda
January 26th, 2009
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?