WordPress site owners and developers every now and then come into a position where they need a test site to run a quick check, or to create a staging environment for more complex development or experiments. TasteWP offers the simplest and fastest solution when it comes to WordPress sandbox environments: a couple of clicks and a few seconds is just enough for you to get your first free WordPress test site.
We wrote about website hosting solutions before, but for quickly generated WordPress test sites, you don’t have to take out your credit card, in fact, you can get your first test sites on TasteWP without even registering. In case you need a test site that lasts longer than a week, then consider spending a mere coin or two on premium test sites.
Steps to Launching your first test site
As soon as you land on the homepage of TasteWP, you will notice that it has automatically switched to the preferred language set in your browser, and test sites will later be created in the same language as well. However, users can change the language to any of the 20 currently available.
On a quick glance, two main features are visible on the main page:
- Set it up! – which will instantly launch a WordPress instance with the latest stable versions of WordPress and PHP, and with other default settings;
- Advanced Setup – that will allow you to specify settings for the next WordPress instance that will be created.
The launching phase of the site usually lasts amazingly less than 3 seconds, after which you will be automatically logged in to your mint WordPress test site. You will be welcomed by the intro screen with sharable admin credentials.
The default test site contains everything that a normal WordPress site has, with the addition of a couple of promoted plugins. Notably, one of them is Backup Migration which can be useful for the creation of a staging environment, or if you want to migrate the staging site back to the main site.
On the Advanced Setup screen, you can exclude these plugins from being installed, but also set other options, such as:
- Define the WordPress and PHP versions that will be used;
- Edit the advanced WP configuration set, which includes debug, cache, cron, and other options;
- Set a custom name for your test site, if you don’t like the random funny names that are randomly generated;
- Make a multisite on Subpaths;
- And finally, you can pick the standard temporary test site or a non-expiring premium site creation.
Taking advantage of a registered TasteWP user
Signing up on TasteWP is short and free, and once you have confirmed the registration, additional features will be at your disposal.
Foremost, the longevity of test sites of registered TasteWP users is expanded to seven days, and the maximum number of active test sites is also increased to six.
Moreover, with the Site Manager screen within the TasteWP user’s Dashboard, you will have a clear overview of your test sites. In the list of test sites, you will see their time until expiry, WordPress and PHP versions, disk usage, and if they are multisite types.
From the Site Manager page, you can also conduct several actions on your sites:
- Auto-login to the site’s admin area;
- Reset admin password;
- Disable all plugins;
- Download debug log;
- Change the PHP version;
- Delete the site and
- Make the site premium.
The Site Templates section of the TasteWP Dashboard gives you the possibility to forge a unique URL, that will trigger a test site creation, with a pre-defined configuration set, plugins, and a theme.
During Site Template composition, you may pick through options from the Advanced Setup screen, and you also have the choice to add up to five plugins of your choosing, and a theme. You can pick through plugins and themes from the official WordPress repository, but you can also upload custom ones.
All of this makes the Site Template feature ideal for developers who want to offer plugin demos to their consumers and prospects.
Premium sites last as long as you want, or as long as you are paying a subscription. These special sites also have a significantly expanded size limit, to 20GB, compared to the 1GB that all other free test sites have. Pricing starts as low as $2.98 per premium site. Once you have the license purchased, you can upgrade one of your existing test sites, or you can create a brand-new premium site.
Plugin demo links
Site Templates is a perfect tool for plugin developers because they can create demos for custom and premium plugins. And with the help of custom plugins, they can also add custom content and pre-defined settings.
Site Templates are also useful for plugins that serve as add-on plugins, or extensions. Elementor and Contact Form 7 have numerous add-ons for example. Demo links can also be set up to redirect users to a pre-defined menu screen.
Finally, the TasteWP team can kindly convert your demo link so they look shorter and nicer. Here is one demo link for example https://demo.tastewp.com/neve-pack
This demo link will install a widespread Neve theme, with two specialized complementary that provide starter templates and in addition, an Elementor page builder. It will also redirect users directly to the theme’s relevant menu and it will minimize the TasteWP intro screen.
However casual WordPress users also have a straightforward plugin demo trick for checking out free WordPress plugins. This demo feature is quick and easy to use, all you need to do is swap “WordPress” with “tastewp” in the plugin’s URL and hit Enter key.
For example, let’s Edit the official Yoast SEO page URL, from https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/ to https://tastewp.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/ and press Enter. The test site will be immediately set up with the Yoast SEO plugin, and you will be redirected to its respective menu page.
To make plugin demoing even simpler, Inisev – the team behind the TasteWP, developed a magic bookmark. By adding it to your browser’s bookmark toolbar, you will be able to launch plugin demos with just one click.
Quick demo features work on any plugin or theme in the WordPress repository.
The benefits of TasteWP
People who are just starting to learn WordPress can greatly benefit from TasteWP. Quickly generating a mint WordPress instance gives enthusiasts the freedom to experiment entirely carefree, because test sites can easily be deleted, recreated, or restored without any consequence.
TasteWP is being used by WordPress teachers and students around the globe because students can also easily share access to their sites with their teachers.
Developers know from experience that a plugin or software in development can work flawlessly on a local machine, but problems might start popping up once it is been re-tested on a live site.
Today’s development teams are often dispersed across the world, so it is even more applicable to work with online tools, rather than local ones.
For WordPress site developers that are brave enough to experiment with plugins and codes from shady corners of the web, testing grounds on remote servers are a safe way to do it, as no damage can be done this way.
Unlike local WP test sites, TasteWP will not consume the resources of your machine or a server and will leave no trash behind. Local WP test sites also require manual work and time to set up, while with TasteWP you will waste no time at all.
Conclusion
TasteWP is a straightforward tool for test site creation with a neat design, and WordPress beginners will have an easy time with it. Experienced WordPress users will also have plenty of available features to make use of, but none of the fancy stuff will ever get in the way of providing you with a basic thing – a quick testing site in a simple and lightning-fast manner. So go ahead, take a minute and spin up your first TasteWP test site now.
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