WordPress Plugin: Theme Switcha
![[ Theme Switcha ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2016/theme-switcha.jpg)
Announcing my latest WordPress plugin, Theme Switcha! There are many theme-switch plugins but none of them provide the simplicity, performance, and reliability that I require for my own sites. So I wrote my own plugin using the WP API and kept the code as focused and solid as possible. Only essential theme-switching features have been added, along with a simple yet informative UI. Theme Switcha gives you a consistent, quality theme-switching experience that you can optionally share with your visitors.
![[ Theme Switcha UI ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2016/theme-switcha-themes.jpg)
Theme Switcha – All your themes ready for switching
Plugin Features
Theme Switcha is Packed full of features:
- Enables you to develop new themes while visitors use the default theme
- Control who can switch themes (admins, users with passkey, or everyone)
- Administrators can switch themes directly via the WP Admin Area
- Enable visitors to switch and preview themes on the front-end
- Each visitor can choose their own theme
- Send preview links to clients via the passkey
- Choose your own custom passkey code for preview links
- Set the duration (cookie timeout) for switched themes
- Enable/disable theme preview in the Admin Area
- Enable/disable all theme switching without deactivating the plugin
- Provides several shortcodes to enable visitors to switch themes
- Shortcodes display themes as a list, select menu, or thumbnails
- Changed options are saved when working on switched themes
- Simple, stylish UI featuring screenshots of each theme
- Works with any theme, parent themes and child themes
Theme Switcha makes it easy for the site admin to preview and develop new themes without changing the default theme. So visitors will continue to use your site normally without ever knowing that you are testing new themes behind the scenes. And if you want to enable your visitors to switch themes, you can do that as well by adding a shortcode to any WP Post or Page. Then each visitor will be able to select and preview any of your WordPress themes.
Useful for things!
Theme Switcha is useful for things like:
- Maintenance mode – display a temporary theme to visitors while you update your primary theme
- Theme test drive – preview and test new themes without disrupting anything on the frontend
- Theme development – perfect for developing new themes to fit your existing site content
- Client presentations – send clients special “theme preview” links to show off new templates
The beauty of Theme Switcha is that it’s all 100% transparent: visitors will never know that you are hard at work testing and building awesome new themes behind the scenes.
Download
You can learn more and download Theme Switcha from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
12 responses to “WordPress Plugin: Theme Switcha”
very nice feautres in this plugin, usually I use maintaince mode plugin to close website or work with website on other catalog.
I used translation submission tool which is now built into wordpress.org. When you log in there, you can see the progress with translation of your plugins. I did strings for Russian, but those need approval from your side to be included into next build. As far as I understood the new process.
Yeah I logged into WordPress.org and viewed your translation, but I could not find any button to “approve” it. I think maybe it needs to be approved by someone on the WP/GlotPress team..?
https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/frequently-asked-questions/#as-a-plugintheme-author-how-can-my-translators-get-validation-rights. thats the tip
Yeah that explains how to grant rights to contributors/translators, but what I don’t understand is how plugin authors are supposed to approve translations. I’ve got like 20 plugins out there with lots of translations and I’ve never had to “approve” any of them. They always just work magically.
Got @yui at #polyglots. She approved translation. Voila!
Awesome. So is that normally how it works? You have to tweet or message someone on the team? I have tried sifting thru the docs to find a straightforward answer to how the approval process works, but it all seems to be written for translators instead of plugin devs. Let me know if you discover any further clues about how it works.
Its a Polish Language? Looks very good. Simple and Clean but I wonder if is multilanguage there.
Theme Switcha is brand new so currently there is only one translation (Russian). But the plugin is fully internationalized and ready to go, so if you want to translate, you can do so here.
This plugin looks awesome! I have one question. I’ve deleted all but one of my themes, ie, the theme I’m currently using, from my selection of themes. Would that theme then be the “default theme” that my users would see while I put together my new theme? Or is there some other “default” theme my users would see?
Thanks!
Hi Nicole, whichever theme is currently active under the Appearance menu in the WP Admin Area is used as the “default” theme. That is the one that normal visitors will see.
Excellent, that’s exactly what I hoped for. Thanks!!