preview my theme–please help

  • Okay, I am spending entirely too long trying to figure this out. I want to change my theme and I have the sandbox theme installed, but I can’t edit it without switching to it on my live site. I have tried downloading the Preview Theme plugin here: https://boren.nu/archives/2005/03/08/preview-theme-plugin/ but I can’t figure out how to save it as a .php file. I admit, I don’t understand php at all. I read on one thread here something about copying and pasting it using something in the cpanel to give it the php code, but I need more detailed instructions, because I don’t have a clue where or how to do that.

    Another question is, once I have this plugin working, am I going to be able to edit the theme I’m working on using the Theme Editor under the Presentation menu? Or will I have to make changes some other way?

    Thank you! I have been trying to do this for a few nights now, but I don’t get very much time to work on it all at once, and I just keep running into problems. All of this just to be able to start making changes to the sandbox theme. And I haven’t even begun to figure out how to do that!

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • Right click on the link for the download (https://boren.nu/downloads/preview_theme.phps), the browser should ask where you want to save the file, navigate to where you want to save it, and change the file name prior to saving to preview_theme.php

    Thread Starter lollymom

    (@lollymom)

    Okay, I did that, and I put it in my plugins folder, but it’s not appearing on my plugin page in Dashboard.

    Huh. Well, dunno then, maybe it’s not written to be compatible with your version of wp. Sorry!

    Thread Starter lollymom

    (@lollymom)

    I’m using 2.0.4, and I think others have used this plugin with this version.

    When I do what you tell me to do, even though I changed the name to .php at the end, it still says “save as type .htm” in the window below.

    I just don’t get how to save it as a .php file. All the other plugins I’ve used automatically save that way. I don’t understand why this one isn’t.

    I am afraid that right click thing will not work with that phps file.
    When you see the plugin file displayed in your browser, just Select All > Copy and then open an empty file in Notepad or some other plain text editor… paste what you copied and save the file as preview_theme.php.
    It should work.

    Thread Starter lollymom

    (@lollymom)

    Oh my goodness! It worked! Thank you! Thank you!

    Um…. glad it worked, lollymom.

    Moshu, the right click option worked fine for me at the point in time I posted. In fact I’ve never had it NOT work.

    To future readers following moshu’s suggestion, please make sure that when pasting the contents of a plugin (PHP) file, the very first line of your document is:

    <?php

    and the very last line is:

    ?>

    Spaces or empty lines at the start and end of a straight-up PHP file can cause all sorts of problems and errors we’d rather not have to troubleshoot…

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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