Do You Have A Test Website? And Why?
When you attend Jay's webinars in mid 2020, he strongly recommends using GeneratePress as your website theme. After years of using the Classic Editor in WordPress, Jay has started to use the Block Editor. On his webinar today, July 24th, he gave us a preliminary demo on the features and benefit of the Block Editor. AS well as GeneratePress.
I do not have GeneratePress as my website Theme. And I use the Classic Editor. If you happen to be in my situation where you first started creating your website one to two years ago or more, the chances are you will have used a different Theme.
Rationale To Use A Test Website
My Theme happens to be screenr. And I am much more comfortable using he Classic Editor. I want to use GeneratePress as well as the Block Editor. Should I migrate screenr to GeneratePress and start using the Block Editor instead?
A few weeks ago on another webinar I asked Jay this question. He suggested I create a demo website using one of my free Site Rubix domains and test it out.
I did that today. So glad I did as things didn't work out so smoothly. I created my new website using the screenr Theme and used the Classic Editor. After adding a few posts and a static home page plus a few pictures, I did a transfer to GeneraeePress.
I lost the upper built-in heading picture of screenr. That is what attracted me to that Theme in the first place. The reason being the content doesn't show until you scroll down. In my current website I reduced the vertical thickness of the picture to a band where I have relevant heading titles appear.
But having a big picture at the top is not good for a business, blogging website. I could live without it for improved functionality.
The Results
When I tried to duplicate that in screenr like before, I got error messages and couldn't't save the change. Now I have to relearn what I did before.
So I tried the Block Editor that I had to add as a Gutenberg plugin. I felt as if I was in a foreign land using that. I could see that it was more flexible and had more capability. But it is going to take more learning on how to use it. Jay said he has a future webinar planned on using the Blovk Editor. I will wait until I attend that webinar before I start to use it.
As far as changing my Theme, when I did that I was also lost. Hence, I think I am not going to change my current website to GeneratePress. But when I create a new business website, I will use this Theme.
The Value Of A Test Website
I found the value of using a demo website to test out new things. And it saved me a lot of grief if I had barged straight ahead and made changes to my current website.
What about you? Have you used a demo website to test new things? If so, what was your experience like? And if you haven't, will you use this approach to test out new things?
I'd love to hear from you.
All the best in your affiliate marketing journey.
Edwin
Recent Comments
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I will soon have a specific test site.
I have a Wordpress website I created a number of years ago about my father's science fiction. I did it as firstname-lastname dot com and it is online that way to this day. (I'm not trying to be secretive about his name, you can find it on my profile page. It just isn't pertinent to this discussion.)
I also registered the domain firstnamelastname dot com and have been pointing that at the one that is live.
WELL... I am gradually moving all my old sites over to WA hosting, and I am also writing a related memoir most likely to be called "Science Fiction Daughter."
So I have a siterubix version of the site about him which will eventually go live but in the meantime I am messing around with it. There is quite a lot on the site that I will take off and put in the book, so the test site is very handy for that.
Great to read your insights into using a test site. I wish you much success with your novel.
Thanks for commenting.
Edwin
I did not know you could create a test website. thank you for the post, yes it is a great idea to test your pages and themes before going live, but the questions is how long can the test website be allowed to be used if it is just used to test your pages, is it not taking up web space.
Thanks and stay safe.
Since you joined a year ago you have 25 free Site Rubix websites available. If you use Site Rubix to make up one of these test websites it doesn't matter how much space it takes. You can use it for testing anything.
Hope this helps.
Edwin
Outstanding! Thanks Edwin. We are blessed to have people like you and Chrystopher to help us along.
Interesting blog, Edwin. It has raised some questions in my mind that I would like your response on. I am thinking about building a electronics/technology test site, but want to be sure that I don't unnecessarily use up resources that I will need later First, does a demo or test site count against the free ones Premium members are allowed. Second, if the site is only a test or demo, what do your do with it after you have tried it out, ie, established it as a site you want to keep, or delete it having learned what you were testing or demonstrating. You may not understand what I am asking, but if you can enlighten me some on this I will appreciate it. Thanks.
All of that is possible Earl and as you joined in August 2019 you have access to 25 free SiteRubix subdomains and 25 own domain names. So if it is purely a test website then it won't cost you anything if you use the free SiteRubix subdomain.
As for what do you do with it once you're done, that is up to you. You can either delete it or you can purchase your own domain name and move the contents to the new domain name. Exactly the same as what Starter Members do here.
Hope that helps
Thanks for commenting. Chrystopher answered well. Glad to know we have several options.
Edwin
Thank you, Chrystopher, for reaffirming what I am sure was covered early on in the training. We do, indeed, have quite a broad stretch of room to work. As I said though, it is reaffirming to have it articulated so clearly. Thanks again.
Great post Edwind, I have a test site for testing new plugins etc. I think it is working ok. It is good to not risk messing things up on your other websites. We have the opportunity here at WA of free domains, so why not take advantage of it.
-Roy-
Indeed yes. I also learned something new. We can have our active sites duplicated as staging sites to experiment with. That's more useful than creating a new site. Thanks for commenting.
Edwin
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Hi Edwin, I have a test website just to test out some plugins and changed themes to have a feel. But what I felt, which I haven't done, is that I should have 2 test website.
1. One test website that is based on the same theme as my productive one. So that if I wanted to try some new plugin or features, I have something quite close to my production website to try. But for this one, the AIO or Yoast should not be activated. This should thus be like a UAT environment.
2. A 2nd test website that allows us to change themes and test concepts, more for technical purposes such as test the speed. For example, if I change to GP from my existing theme, I might want to test the loading speed to compare either through GTMetrix or Pingdom or PageSpeed Insight. But to do this, i think we will need to activate the AIO SEO or Yoast.
Not sure how accurate I am on this but at least just my thoughts, if it make sense. I hope to do this some day, now just struggling to work on content..
Cheers
Richard
Hi Richard, sounds like a worthy plan. There is another way you may wish to pursue.
You can ask Site Support to make you a clone of your current website using a staging URL based on Site Rubix. This will not be subjected to indexing by Google.
Now you can make changes on your clone website that will provide you with more accurate results. Have you tried this approach before?
Cheers.
Edwin
Sounds good Richard and your first option is very similar to a Staging website, but without all of the same content. For both sites though you will want to have all plugins enabled, such as AIO or Yoast, to allow for better testing. Having these plugins installed and activated will not affect your SEO or Duplicate Content etc as you just need to set the website to Noindex.
I didn't know I could. Thanks for the hints.
Thanks Chrystopher, will give it a try.
Thanks for helping out here. Truly appreciate it. I did the staging website thing and love it. What a great way to see the areas that need attention before doing the actual theme change.
Cheers.
Edwin
You're welcome Edwin :-)
There are two main ways of using a Staging website, although technically only option 1 should be used.
1 - You create a staging website, make your changes, then move the files back to the production website. During this time, you do not make any changes to the production website.
2 - You create a staging website (clone), make your changes to see what works and how to do it, once happy you then make the same changes to the production website manually. You then delete the staging/cloned website until the next time. During this time, you can continue making changes to the production website.
Hope this helps,
Chrystopher