Non-Live Edit

I have been playing with the plugin on my development site and it works well. I did notice that I can only modify settings and add color swatches or images when the plugin is live. When I do install this plugin on my actual shop, this will greatly affect my products pages while customers may be shopping. I hate to put my site in maintenance mode.

Is there a way to activate the plugin and add all the swatches before it goes live? Perhaps a preview mode, similar to the theme customization, would work.