The other possibility would be to go in through phpmyadmin and export the database and then import it into your dev setup. That would not bring over any images, but your dev setup should still display those images (hotlinked) so for dev purposed it won't matter. You could also only export some of the content rather than all of it. Include just enough representative content for you to work with. This is typically what I do on large sites.

These forums are for those hosted here on the wordpress.COM hosting service and things here work differently.

If you are not familiar with the differences, see this support document.

Ive recreated the homepage in photoshop. I dont need a kindergarden like education on this but ive never redesigned an entire wp site from scratch.

Can I use a theme that has a layout similar to the mockup I made and just mess around with it?

The site is so big I cant download it to my local machine. What do you recommend I do in order to design offline?

Is it possible to redesign just the front page for now and the other pages over the weeks to come?

Also, I need to make sure not to lose his SEO ranking or anything. Hes worked really hard.

Please help me with my process. I dont wanna mess up his traffic or site.

There's a link to your dashboard on the stats page.

I always had a tab open with my stats, and another with my dashboard. I have no complaint at all.

There has not been any change so far -- which I would say is neutral. But we also know that WP never wants to admit a mistake.

So perhaps we could be equally kind and say that maybe they are re-evaluating their plans? :-)

I know. Beware your rose-colored glasses.

It is not as far as I can see.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Automattic needs to remember our value to them. Yes, we get a free platform - in return, Automattic get free testing. Some of us are actually highly qualified testers in our professional lives. My daily rate would be $2,700 and those skills others pay for Automattic is getting for free. Admittedly I am not testing every theme for them, but I'm sure you get my drift. It is a two way street here and I won't be spoken to like a naughty child by someone younger than my oldest son. It is rude, arrogant and totally inappropriate in a professional environment.

we're all guinea pigs here: unpaid testers.

And damn good testers we are too, if I may say so myself!!

@ingridcc - I do actually agree with you. The whole thing is a pain, but that said, WordPress.com change things all the time, it's what they do. And one can either get used to it or leave. (One day I will come to the end of my tether and probably leave, but at the moment I'm in the process of getting used to this current change.)

There's an old (but still valid) post on Lorelle's blog that pretty much sums up WordPress.com and what they do:

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/27/wordpress-versions-how-many-and-whats-the-diff/

And here's the relevant quote from it that I'm referring to (with my emphasis in italics):

"WordPress.com is the premiere WordPress site, acting as a beta tester for new features coming out for the self-hosted, full version of WordPress."

In other words, as I've said many times in these forums - and only the forum volunteers who've more experience than me take any notice of it - we're all guinea pigs here: unpaid testers.

Besides, from the concept point of view, the homepage is something user-related. The statistics page on the other hand, is definitely blog related. So it should stick to the blog administration.

Adminstrating/managing a blog which includes analyzing blog use metrics/statistics is not the same as casually reading other people's wordpress blogs.

I like having the dashboard for me as the driver (of my blog content) for the blog, to have all my critical information to see if the blog is "performing" in the way I expect it, understand the readers' footprint reading mileage on it,..while I also seamlessly with less clicks, manage my blog content and its design/security features.

The above paragraph is meant to express precisely the objective of all-in-1-glance same page functionality of the Dashboard. Do not fragment the functionality of Dashboard into tab modules.

Reading other blog posts..is like looking out of the car, from the driver's seat, at the passing scenery. BUT I cannot drive the car (meaning manage my blog content) at the same time or even find /look at the information at the same time.