Ever wanted to try out a new plugin or theme and see how it would work on your blog before activating it? Then here are two excellent plugins for that: Plugin Test Drive and Theme Test Drive. Both the plugins allow you to make changes and do testing on your live blog while keeping it completely invisible from blog visitors.
Plugin Test Drive
Plugin Test Drive works by conditionally activating selected plugins based on username or IP address. If you select the username option, plugins are activated only for that particular user. With the IP address option, you can also allow an unregistered user to test plugins.
Once you are satisfied with your testing, you can easily stop the testing mode and activate the plugin from the plugin panel.
Download: Plugin Test Drive
Theme Test Drive
As you might have already guessed from the name, Theme Test Drive allows you to safely test a theme before making it public on your blog. Visitors will continue to see the already activated theme while you, as an administrator, can continue testing and making changes to the theme you want.
By default, a theme is activated only for an administrator but you can easily allow even editors and authors to test by changing access level from the plugin options.
Download: Theme Test Drive