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Jesselynn Amerling
1,524 PointsHow to manage multiple themes for multiple sites on Wordpress
I have two themes for two different sites on my Wordpress right now. When I switched over to my newest theme I noticed info from my first theme is still in my Dashboard. Do I need to create another Wordpress account for each theme? Neither of them are live on the web yet, I'm just practicing locally for now.
3 Answers
lil zai
3,885 PointsI manage multiple sites myself. I have been using https://managewp.com/ because its made it so easy to manage different sites from one dashboard, all on one account.
MODERATOR NOTE: Changed from "Comment" to "Answer."
Andrew McCormick
17,730 PointsI think we need more information on what you want the outcome to be.
Quick answer is that WordPress manages content which it stores in the database. For the most part, a theme is just a skin that you layover the content to give it live. So if you change your theme, you don't change the content, you just give it a different skin so it looks different.
If you want to have a completely blank site for your other theme, then yes you'll need another install of WordPress. Great thing is that there are no limits to how many Wordpress sites you can install on a server (although your host may limit you). If you do end up with many sites, make sure to use a tool like Nelius mention to keep everything organized and up to date.
Lewis Cowles
74,902 PointsI Cannot believe the other answers... Especially from a mod!
WordPress doesn't need tools to use multiple sites in development; or in some cases in production as well. WP comes with tooling, with some central admin; including the ability to "network enable" plugins and themes. One benefit of this is you'll know that you have not accidentally baked a specific url into the theme that could hurt users.
If you want both themes to be active for development offline, or experimentation offline, you can setup multisite using folders rather than sub-domains; and because it is only themes, (also works with plugins), they will absolutely be usable when you put them on a regular WordPress by committing their specific theme folder (or plugin folder for plugin) to version control (VC), creating a release when ready (via VC tooling), and deploying via continuous deployment (CD).
Essentially, for development, you don't need the same url's as online; you can easily use WordPress multisite in directory mode, and develop the themes in tandem without switching themes. Once ready to go online you will create a commit, then tag a release (to use Git terminology). You can then download the release and upload, or use your continuous deployment tooling to put the theme online to staging, or possibly straight to production.