[justinator]

Ever try redesigning a Wordpress site?

All those plugins are just a Big Ball of Mud, and trying to figure out how to apply a design to it, without breaking everything is kind of impossible. Change a theme? Lose settings, styles, major layout choices, menu locations. I can go on.

You basically have to develop your theme, apply it to the LIVE site, and fix the fires you find. Maybe a needed plugin now isn't compatible with whatever tech the new theme brings in. Well, you're hosed.

This is fine if you're just a blogger, but if you're running a business off your Wordpress site, it's a complete disaster. Like - we hosed a live Wordpress site simply by making duplicate dev site. I don't know how I'm supposed to work with that sort of environment.

But any suggestions are welcome.

[coldtea]

>Ever try redesigning a Wordpress site?

Yes, me and tons of others people over the years.

>* All those plugins are just a Big Ball of Mud, and trying to figure out how to apply a design to it, without breaking everything is kind of impossible. Change a theme? Lose settings, styles, major layout choices, menu locations. I can go on.*

Depends on how you wrote the theme (or which theme you've bought) and what you want to change. Like on any other platform. It could also be a totally seamless experience. If your whole IA was based on the way the theme did things (custom post types, meta boxes and so on), then you need to port that too.

[dawnerd]

We do themes semi frequently enough to have a sort of process down. Never any problems here really. We just opt to not use much of the Wordpress ui helpers and make sure we’re not using plugins that generate their own ui. Then again they mostly end up being hosted with Wordpress VIP and they hold everything to a fairly high standard.

I’ll admit though, it’s a bit weird having a prod and dev environment with how many tweaks Wordpress can have. Haven’t really come up with a good solution for that.