I’m trying to update my blog (jaeminyi.com) and replace the old theme with Theme X. However, I’m finding this process to be extremely complicated and was wondering if you could give me a few pointers on how to proceed!

Basically, I’d like to switch to Theme X and spend a few weeks updating it and making it look nice, but I don’t want my site to be seen in its unfinished state. It seems like the best option would be to transfer my CURRENT site to a local copy (using MAMP), then install and tinker with Theme X on the local copy, and then migrate back to the live site.

Your two support threads (this one, and this one) gave helpful tips for creating a new local site from scratch, but I couldn’t find anything on upgrading a CURRENT site locally. Never having done this, this seems really complicated and I’m worried about messing up and “breaking” my site.

Could you guys offer any helpful pointers or steps on how to do this the right way? And any common pitfalls I should avoid?

I did a lot of Googling and couldn’t find a clear answer to this specific situation. Seems like a common thing that people would have to do (upgrading a current site’s theme, but doing so locally) but I’m having trouble finding the right info. Would really appreciate your guys help, thanks so much!

+ Jaemin

Here are some nice tutorials that you can read to get assistance.

Documentation

Theme Installation

Consider searching from here as well http://theme.co/x/member/kb/

1. Create a test site, either on your local host or on a “hidden” directory on your server
2. Copy all your content over to the site and basically make it look identical to your current one
3. Enable the X theme
4. Go through your site and change the settings you need to so that it looks the way you want. You may need to rewrite some pages or copy content into the visual composer so that you can take advantage of their layout features
5. Once you’re done, export your test site, backup your live site and then replace the content on the live site with your test site’s export

That should get you where you want.

For anyone else reading this, I used DesktopServer to create a local test site, which seemed way easier than using MAMP (http://www.timsquires.com.au/desktopserver-serverpress-review/). And I was able to easily copy my live website to my local test site using these instructions: http://serverpress.com/news/using-duplicator-to-import-a-live-website/#more-1689

Some more helpful links:
– how to clone a live site to a local site using MAMP: http://egalo.com/2012/05/15/clone-live-wordpress-to-local-env/
– how to localhost using XAMP: http://lifeinthegrid.com/do-you-localhost-your-wordpress/
– Getting started with DesktopServer: http://serverpress.com/news/getting-started-with-desktopserver/
– How to export to live site using DesktopServer: (http://serverpress.com/news/using-direct-deploy-to-launch-websites/#more-7827)

Hope that’s helpful to someone else. Cheers!