A client has asked me to redesign their existing WordPress site but to keep the majority of the data (blog posts) in the new theme. In the past I have used plugins to hide the theme I am building from the public but to show the new one to logged in users. My problem with this new case is that the client wants completely new headings on the menu.
So my question is this: Is there a way to make the menu theme specific so I can fully develop the new theme without impacting the present themes menu?
Oddz - I have worked locally in the past but my problem is showing clients ongoing progress on the development. Ok if there round the corner and can pop in but for a lot of my clients that isn’t practical.
Guess hard coding is the way to go and then swap it out when we go live.
It might be a worthy investment to purchase your own hosting to set-up a dev environment. Once the client signs off on the dev version update production. It is really poor practice to work directly on the production server. The proper development work flow is to do all work locally, push to some type of dev environment than perhaps a QA one than production. You might be able yo get away with it because your making small changes for now but there will be a time where working directly on the production server won’t work. Not to mention by working in production you are effectively consuming bandwidth for the customer. Changes shouldn’t happen to production before they are ready at the very least locally.
Personally the investment in Backup Buddy was one of the best decisions I ever made for development and deployment of Wordpress websites. If I had just 3 plugins to choose, this would be one of them. Why? Because it makes backing up, transfer, migration of Wordpress websites just insanely easy.
What has this to do with the above issue? The posters recommending a development environment are right. With Backup Buddy you would install the plugin on the live site, run a full backup and then take it either locally or to whatever development site you want. You can be running a complete duplicate of the website in a matter of minutes at a completely different URL all links intact.
Personally I want to work locally, but my attempts have all been thwarted by an odd MAMP error. So I use a subdirectory devoted to development on our own server. I work a combination of local folders and pushing to the development server. When I’m ready I can send a client a link and they see their own website (perhaps minus a post or two but you can warn them that the “look” and “function” are kept separate to the content).
If you are developing a theme for your client there’s no reason why at the end of this process you can’t package your theme, upload it to the live server and switch it on knowing exactly what you are turning on.
It would solve your conflict in trying to run two menus and dual themes on the same live website.