(Pro tips can still come from non-pros, right? 👀)
I only started doing this recently, but it’s a lot better for my stress levels 😂
I change the title to DEV ONLY so I know how safe it is to edit the functionality etc. I also have a banner in the HTML that shows if I’m not actually editing the original “real” version, which also reassures me.
Then I can break stuff, save to my hearts content (I have an itchy save-finger). And only copy it across to the real version when I’m happy it’s safe. Just remember not to overwrite the $meta stuff if that’s different in your dev copy. Though if you accidentally do that, the backups are very useful for quickly grabbing what you need to put back.
For the name, I call it the same, but with -dev- in there somewhere, and -4958734957 a load of random numbers at the end so it’s super unlikely people could stumble across it.
Yeah sounds fine… I don’t do that specifically because I don’t want people to see the half-broken half-finished kind of stuff while I’m working on it. And for something like plugins I don’t want to break things for anyone using it. I’m specifically doing this to have a “private” copy.