March 20

Understanding WP Theme Testing to Ship Better Experience

So, you have found a new WordPress theme being introduced and you are eager to activate it? The majority of bloggers becomes curious whenever they encounter an eye-catchy theme. If you want to run a high-performing WP site then spontaneous theme switching without “testing” it might create problems for you. Testing a theme is extremely important if you avoid things going wrong. If you want all sections of your blog look in their desirable form. Probably there are some bugs within the design and by planning a proper testing plan, you can check for existing bugs and other errors to ensure a proper functioning of your theme. In this post, we will provide you an in-depth understanding of testing WordPress themes, so that you have an attractive and functional site. Here we mention three phases of development start from planning, designing, development, and the final phase.

Setting up WordPress

There are a myriad of things which you can achieve to make sure you make as few mistakes as possible. You can do the following things:

1. Using a Network

Developing a network installation while installing a theme is good in the sense that it ensures you commit minimum errors during the process. Although it doesn't change the way a theme is being installed, but you can still have a secure way of playing around the installation process.

2. Custom Table Prefix

Setting up a table prefix proves beneficial in two ways: first, it makes sure you don't hardcode database queries. Secondly, it improves the level of security by keeping harmful errors at bay.

3. Enable Debugging

There are times when developers simply leave the variables undefined, which could prove problematic to the user or the debugger. To ensure everything works well, check whether the WP_Debug has been set to 'True' value in wp-config.php file.

4. Disabling Concatenation Scripts

Disabling concatenation is one of the most underused or we can say unexplored features of WordPress. To disable the concatenation scripts simply set define ( 'Concatenation_Scripts', false) in the wp-config.php file. This way your scripts will be pulled in separately.

5. Analyzing Queries

While debugging any theme, it's important to define a query through ('SAVEQUERIES', true) and set it to a constant value in wp-config.php file.

6. Disable the Trash

A useful feature, generally trash gets in your work when you are creating and deleting pages and posts. To disable the trash, go to the settings area and 'define (Empty_Trash_Days', 0) ; in 'wp-config.php file. It's Development Time Development phase is not only about how you to start the process from scratch but also about ensuring that whatever the code you generate is clean and free from flaws. Once you forget things; your code becomes messy; and it becomes difficult for you to maintain it, thus creating a big headache for you.

Below we have mentioned some tools which are helpful in increasing the speed of your project while ensuring that you theme stay sharp, absolutely bug free. You can use any of them as per your needs.

LESS is an ultimate tool you need to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your theme development task. Its provided set of coding helps you create bug free themes with ease. CodeKit is a high performing app that allows you build websites faster. It comes complete with all the leading languages such as Sass, Less, Stylus and more. Plus, a lot of alternatives are also provided including Mixture, and Fire App. Snippets is perfect for those who love to customize code. These are solid tools which can be customized as per your need. Switching Users is useful when you need to which user has to do what, especially when you have defined a role-specific functionality.

Final Testing

We are to get a bit more specific to check if everything is crystal clear. So, to make sure everything works well, try the tricks and tools below:

1. Examining WordPress Theme

WordPress Theme Check developed by WordPress developers is an extremely useful tool to make sure that your developed theme is up to the mark. The tool closely monitors the legacy functions, hidden files, and several other necessary functions and specifications.

2. Cloud App and Fluffy App

Cloud App is not a tool but a service which allows you easily and quickly upload and share files. The reason why this app is popular is that it provides easy screen shots and automatically uploads the shortend URLs to the clipboard.

3. Bug Management Tools

There are also so many bug management tools to choose from. Some of them are Srint.ly , Sifter and Redmine. Also it doesn't matter which tool you choose, but how you use is what actually matters. One thing which developers keep in their mind is that whenever you are done with fixing an issue, don't mark it close unless until it is not being approved by someone.

Final Thoughts

While working with different themes you just can be convinced that it's the only theme you were looking for, unless until you don't test it. Hope the above mentioned tips and tricks have provided you an in-depth understanding for keeping the errors at bay and helpful in developing bug free themes.

Author Bio:

Edward Jones holds an impressive amount of expertise in major CMS platforms including Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla and Magento. You can go through his write-ups for gathering a greater insight into the popular CMSs available today. If you need to hire wordpress developer then simply get in touch with Edward.