How to Create a Demo / Test Drive Site for your Theme or Plugin

Written by Jean Galea
Written by Jean Galea
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.

Partner Sponsors

BionicWP

Full disclosure: If you purchase through a link on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure to subscribe to WP Mayor’s RSS feed.

This article was filed in our archives.
Written by Jean Galea
Jean Galea is an investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He is the founder of WP Mayor, the plugins WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight, as well as the Mastermind.fm podcast. His personal blog can be found at jeangalea.com.

In this article

Discover More

3 Responses

  1. 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!

  2. 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.

Share Your Thoughts

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

New discoveries, every week.
Join thousands of designers, developers, and builders that come to WP Mayor to find the best guides, tools, and services for their next website. One email, once a week.
WP Mayor Newsletter

Claim Your Free Website Tip 👇

Leave your name, email and website URL below to receive one actionable improvement tip tailored just for your website within the next 24 hours.

"They identified areas for improvement that we had not previously considered." - Elliot

By providing your information, you'll also be subscribing to our weekly newsletter packed with exclusive content and insights. You can unsubscribe at any time with just one click.

What's missing?