[hatiro]

Hi, With changes in functionality on the continuous (great) upgrades to the core of buddypress, Is there a way of creating a place for a beta theme to run on a live site in parallel with an existing theme? Maybe via a sub-domain, maybe changes to the header.php not really sure…. This would help considerably in development, has anyone done this?

[modemlooper]

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nkthemeswitch/

Allows admin to use a development theme on live site

[djoep]

hmmm… I think I might consider a completely separate install under a sub domain or separate path so I could also experiment with a completely different set of plugins, wordpress versions (like 3.3 beta), as well as themes. I am not familiar with MU to know if you can have such independence, for example, having two versions of buddypress installed at the same time.
joe

[@mercime]

You can only use one version of WP/BP in multisite. If you do not want to use the theme switcher plugin or another plugin like so, you’d have to set up different installs like in XAMP and MAMP, etc.

[djoep]

It’s simple enough to set up a separate install on a live host, you just can’t put both in the root directory, right?
I personally like doing all my initial install, configuration, development and testing using a local install, but before I go live I also like to try it out in the production server environment.
joe

[hatiro]

Thanks for the replies. I think I’m creating a problem for myself bigger than trying to keep up to date with all the upgrades… problem is trying to upgrade older version of buddypress to new version with some plugins now defunct, so quite a change to the site. Having the ability to run a beta site in parallel tapping into the existing data for the network, groups and forums would allow for development to the point of going live and providing some members to test out with their posts being kept, rather than a complete swap out, with always too little testing.