I reckon if I was to ask whether or not you have ever had your blog go offline because you installed a plugin, or because you were playing around with the CSS or PHP codes, that the majority of you would say yes. The most important rule when doing any alterations to a blog is to always make sure you have a backup.

Luckily, ever since I changed my theme to FlexSqueeze I haven’t had much need to touch the internal coding at all. However, because the Theme is so easy to manipulate I have been toying with it to see some of the effects I could have. Some of you may remember the Easter Theme I ran a couple of weeks ago.

The thing is I didn’t want to bother my readers with all the different things I was trying as if figured it would freak them out if every time the page loaded they were confronted with something different, whether it was a different font color or perhaps a different header. I decided to use a Test Site to test the changes before adapting them to this blog. The site I used was Inquest, which was a blog that I originally set up for a young lady that went by the name Inquest. She was truly a remarkably talented blogger and I highly recommend they you have a look at some of her posts. Perhaps if you leave some comments we can coax her back. Anyway at the moment it is running the Easter Theme, but don’t be surprised if it isn’t as it is my Test Blog after all.

Once I was happy with the result the theme allows me to save it as a CSV file which I then import into this blog and all the changes I made gets instantly transferred, no worries or dramas at all.

While I was thinking about the whole procedure today I thought it be a great idea if all bloggers had their own test site. I mean, if you host your site it would be a cinch to set up a test blog. You could use this to test a new plugin or every time, for those of you who do not have the luxury of owning a FlexSqueeze theme, you decide to play around with the CSS or PHP codes. By having a test blog you are ensuring that your live blog does not get infected by any of your manipulations. Once you are happy with the way things are going you can then make the required adjustments to your actual blog.

Talking about themes, many of you may have heard of Thesis, especially if you are a regular reader and I have mentioned it a few times, but for those of you who haven’t, you may find Gromap’s post of some interest. IG, it’s author, has graciously mentioned me as a source for the negative viewpoint of Thesis, but I would like to point out that I never said it was shit or anything, just that it wasn’t as good or flexible as FlexSqueeze. Before you ask, yes if you buy FlexSqueeze from one of my posts I will make a bit of money from the sale but it will not add on any cost to you. You are merely supporting my life as a blogger so that I can keep a whole lot more informative and entertaining posts coming your way.