Wordpress Hack to Debug Themes on a Live Site

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4/9/2007

Wordpress Hack to Debug Themes on a Live Site

How can a Wordpress them be debugged privately without showing the wizard behind the curtain to everyone else? This simple hack will use the specified theme only for one remote IP... yours. This can be used when creating a new theme by configuring Wordpress to present the original theme and specifying your new theme in development in place of THEME_NAME below. Also replace YOUR_IP_ADDR with your local IP address. THEME_NAME must be an existing theme directory in wp-content/themes/.

To debug an existing theme, copy your theme directory to a new directory under /themes/ (maybe THEME_NAME-dev). Leave Wordpress configured to serve the original theme at THEME_NAME and configure the hack to serve THEME_NAME-dev to your IP address.

Edit wordpress/wp-includes/theme.php as below:

Before

function get_template() {
return apply_filters('template', get_option('template'));
}

After

function get_template() {
if($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == 'YOUR_IP_ADDR') {
return 'THEME_NAME';
}
return apply_filters('template', get_option('template'));
}

Depending on how the template links to it's stylesheet, the get_stylesheet() function (in the same file) may need a similar hack:

Before

function get_stylesheet() {
return apply_filters('stylesheet', get_option('stylesheet'));
}

After

function get_stylesheet() {
if($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == 'YOUR_IP_ADDR') {
return 'THEME_NAME';
}
return apply_filters('stylesheet', get_option('stylesheet'));
}

This will not work with a private IP address like 192.168.x.x or 10.10.x.x. The IP must be the external address of your router or firewall. To find your external IP address use this link:
http://emailurl.com/myip

Also remember that if you change local IP addresses, you need to update the IP address configured in the snippet above. Most DSL/cable connections use a dynamic IP address that changes every few hours or daily.

Once the theme is good to go, merge the changes into the live template and comment out the code to disable the hack.

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Post History

2006-12-04 09:12

Added snippet to hack get_stylesheet()

3 Responses to “Wordpress Hack to Debug Themes on a Live Site”

parks » Wordpress Hack to Debug Themes on a Live Site said:
April 9th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
[…] BaronGrackle wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThis simple hack will use the specified theme only for one remote IP… yours. This can be used when creating a new theme by configuring Wordpress to present the original theme and specifying your new theme in development in place of … […]

Wordpress Bug - Theme Reverts to Default Theme - damonparker.org said:
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:55 am
[…] have been working on a new Wordpress theme for this site and have noticed on several occasions that Wordpress has reverted back to the default […]