Users are increasingly wary of themes and plugins that might look good but then prove difficult to use or are riddled with bugs.
One surefire way to assuage those doubts is to create a test drive site for them to try out your theme or plugin, then only download once they are happy with the interface and functionality offered. In my opinion, all plugin and theme developers should be offering this.
Here are two excellent tutorials I’ve come across, they are both good methods of developing such demo/test drive websites with WordPress.
Thomas Griffin Media – Create a Live Demo of your WordPress Plugin
RVA Media – How to Build a WordPress Test Site
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3 Responses
Hey, the links above are indeed still dead.
I’d like to update something an earlier commenter mentioned…
WP Sandbox pricing has been updated, starts at $15/month for a handful of sandboxes and basic features. Plans increase in pricing depending on what features you need and how many sandboxes you’ll be activating each month. Annual plans are available.
The less expensive plans are designed to be within reach of solo developers and freelancers, while the higher tiers are for agencies and development shops who need to do a lot of WordPress demos each month.
https://wpsandbox.io/ starts at $15/month.
Have a great rest of your day, folks!
Hi,
Both these links are dead now.
btw, during my search, here are the services who offer this:
https://wpsandbox.io/ (Fixed $1000/month)
https://trywp.io/ ($1 per test site created )
https://wpdemo.net/ (Monthly slab pricing )
Hope it helps
Good advice. Equally important, or actually much more important, is to have a staging / testing site for your live site so that you can test in a non-live environment any plugin and theme updates (and WP updates) before you implement them on your live site.