Theme Test Drive
Safely test drive any theme as an administrator, while visitors use the default one.
3.9(50 reviews)
·8.0K+ active installs·Updated 8 years agoAs of April 2026, Theme Test Drive is a WordPress test plugin with 8.0K+ active installations and a 3.9/5 rating from 50 reviews. It has been downloaded 520K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 2.3+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2008. Last updated 8 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Downloads are up 8% this week. Top alternative: Quiz and Survey Master (QSM) – Easy….
3.9/550 reviews
8.0K+active installs
520K+total downloads
18 yearssince 2008
Overview
Theme Test Drive WordPress plugin allows you to safely test drive any theme on your blog as administrator, while visitors still use the default one.
It happens completely transparent and they will not even notice you run a different theme for yourself.
Best part is you can even set the testing theme options (if it has them) in the Admin panel while you are testing the theme.
You can also preview any theme by adding “?theme=xxx” to your blog URL. For example http://www.myblog.com/?theme=Default
Plugin by Vladimir Prelovac. Managing more than one WordPress sites? Check out ManageWP.
Credits
Some of the functions of Theme Test Drive plugin came from other plugins. So I can at least thank these people:
- Ryan Boren for his Theme Switcher plugin
- Andres Santos for his wp-websnapr plu…
Screenshots
Ratings & Reviews
3.950 reviews
5 ★
31
4 ★
5
3 ★
2
2 ★
0
1 ★
12
Recent Reviews
Breaks my active theme
by angeljs·9 years ago
Although I badly need a plugin such as this, once I tried it, all of my settings and widgets from my active theme were reverted and I had to put my site into maintenance mode while I spent 20 minutes configuring everything again!
Useful plugin
by MC3·9 years ago
Seems to work OK with 4.6.1 but it would be good if the developer could conform and update “officially” as it were. I’m finding this plugin invaluable for sites with pupblic-facing themes that are incompatible with the CiviCRM plugin. Civi is a complex plugin and can easily break when faced with themes or other plugins that aren’t well written in terms of enqueuing scripts only when essential. Much of the complexity in Civi is on admin pages, and this plugin solves the problem by auto-switching the theme to something clean for admin users.
works fine
by carlostalaga·10 years ago
nice and simple solution to test a theme. be careful with widgets and custom settings for other plugins. thanks
Doesn't work
by dumascharlotte·10 years ago·1 reply
Same experience as walkerdesigngroup: doesn’t work! 🙁 I feel so frustrated…
Great tool to test themes
by jbeinstein·10 years ago
A great tool to preview new themes to see if it’s worth changing. Especially for someone that’s not very technical. A+
Download Trends
Today: 13Yesterday: 17This week: 66Period total: 3K
Compatibility
| WordPress | 2.3+ requiredTested up to 4.3.34 |
| PHP | false+ required |
Version Adoption
v2.9
96.0%
Other
4.0%
Top Alternatives to Theme Test Drive
Frequently Asked Questions
Changelog
2.9.1
- Fixed security issue
Contributors
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.