Using Roots hosted by WP

1

I’m new to WP (not to PHP though).
It might be a stupid question but is it 100% alright to use Roots on a blog hosted by WP? Is there any gotchas?
And if you know, does it play nice with the Theme Test Drive plugin?

I’d love from the outset just to be safe.

2

WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to use any custom themes; so it’s not possible to use Roots there.

The test drive plugin should work, but I would recommend you develop locally or on a staging server rather than “test drive” the theme on a production site.

Also note that Roots is meant to be a starter theme that you heavily customise to create something new; it’s not an end product.

3

@Foxaii I understand I’ve to build on top of Roots. I’ve plenty of experience with Bootstrap.

My plan was to work locally and when it’s ready, use “test drive” just to be certain it works.

What do you mean by WP.com doesn’t allow custom themes? Does this mean I can only use the admin editor to edit the CSS?! Or are you saying I have to publish my theme or something?

4

Maybe there was just a misunderstanding… I see that I can upload a theme (just like I can locally) on the production site, so maybe it’s not hosted on WP.com? It has a custom domain and I was told it was WP.com but maybe there was a mixup.

I think what it must be is that it’s on some third party hosting, but not on one of our local or AWS servers here.

5

Try this:
http://www.whoishostingthis.com/

Saved my pants a couple of months ago because the client had no idea who to even call about their existing hosting set up!

1 Like
6

If you can upload a theme then it’s not hosted on WordPress.com. The distinction between .com and .org is easy for people to overlook, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

How you’re proposing to use the “test drive” is fine, but you still may want to look at keeping your dev/staging server as close to production as possible. The tools to know that your deploy will work first time, every time, and having the option to roll back if the unforeseen happens, should be in every dev’s arsenal. Our new WordPress Stack is a good place to start.