Most folks who know me by now know that by day I am a social media marketer and by night I run lead generation projects. I have been using the Thesis Theme from diythemes for about 6 months now to help facilitate this. In large part things have been running really smoothly allowing me to focus on mission critical issues vs. getting stuck with heavy code modifications; simply put that is why I enjoy Thesis so much.

Recently I have decided that it is time to start testing my sites. I have been searching for an effective way to do this and recently came across a plugin from David Dellanave (site seems to be down atm) that allowed me to split test my WordPress Thesis Theme.

Things You Will Need To Make This Work:

3 Google Profile IDs

WordPress Split Test Plugin by David Dellanave

Step 1 – Create Two Theme Folders

• Create two theme folders
• theme1 (rename your current thesis folder to this)
• theme2 (Copy paste your current thesis folder to here and rename it – this is where your test files will go)

Step 2 – Add Main Google Analytics tracking snippet

• Under Thesis Options > Stats Software and Scripts
• Add main google analtyics tracking code that way you have an account that encompasses all traffic.

Step 3 – Create Two New Google Profile ID’s

• Create 2 google profile ID’s this way you can retain your main analytics account on the live(untested) site.
• You should have two new google profile ID’s one for the “control” and the other for the testing version.

Step 4 – Add Analytics code to footer.php

• Add custom analytics code to theme1 footer.php file and theme2 footer.php file
• note: you should actually have 2 google analytics tracking code on each page.

Step 5 – Analytics Goal Testing

• If you are testing a specific goal, (you should be) then you are going to want to make sure you have goals setup in each Google analytics account.

Step 6 – Modify Custom_Functions PHP Code

• This setup is ideal for testing totally different designs with your custom_functions or custom css files.
• One quick example for testing an object on the home page:

function homepage_custom_top () {
if (is_home() || is_front_page()) { ?>
------insert custom content here-------