Jeffrey Munro

I’ve been a busy bee these last few days. With the launch of WordPress 2.1 I’ve been busy on my test server testing upgrade scenarios. With that I’ve also been pondering on changing the look of Blog Bullet.

There a numerous steps that you must take when you change your WordPress theme to make it work right and with minimum downtime. I’ve listed my Top 6 steps to smoothly move from one theme to the next.

1. First things first! Make a backup of your entire wordpress site and your database! Something will always go wrong when you don’t have a backup. Changing a theme shouldn’t mess anything up, but this is just in case.
2. Test the theme in multiple browsers. download and install Firefox and opera. Make sure that it looks right in all major browsers. sometime some items may appear differently as a result of new css code.
3. Don’t forget the sidebar. A lot of us modify the sidebar to include custom code, adsense ads, links and so on. Make sure you copy all the code from the current theme and bring it over to the new sidebar. If you’re using a widgets based theme, then you’re pretty much ok to go on without copying code over.
4. Stat Tracking. If you’re using tracking code like analytics or sitemeter, don’t forget to add the code to your theme.
5. Make sure your RSS feeds work. I had an issue on one of my older blogs after we switched our themes. We had noticed that our feedburner stats dropped. this was due to the fact that the theme had hard-coded some RSS feed code.
6. Let the world know! You have a new theme on your site, let them know that you changed it and give them an opportunity to leave feedback.

I will be making the changes to the site soon, I believe the update of wordpress will happen on Sunday and the theme will change within a month.

These tips are from my own upgrade experience.