The Test Network feature on your Ning Plus or Ning Pro Network is a great way for you to try out appearance and other code changes before applying them to your live Ning Network. Test networks are private and can have up to 10 members to help you view any modifications from different types of accounts. When you create a test network, you are given a blank slate version of your network.
You can click on the “Copy Settings: Live to Test Network” link on your test network’s dashboard to have the following settings be carried over from your live network:
- Main Page layout
- Main Page text boxes and their content
- Main Page RSS feeds
- Feature settings and preferences
- Theme
- Advanced CSS
- Custom Code
- Language Editor customizations
- File Manager (Ning Pro only)
In this example, the content you see on the main page is content that has been added to the text box on the live network, but has been carried over. Note the empty Photos, Blog Posts and Groups modules.
When you create a test network, it reflects your live network’s plan and appearance, but will not be populated with other content. Any content that can be added to your live network, however, can be added to your test network to help modify its format and appearance.
Test networks are designed to be staging environments and can support any regular content for testing purposes. As a useful testing environment, they are intended solely for this purpose and do not come with the same storage and bandwidth quotas of live Ning Networks.