Couldn’t find this in the backlog though I think it’s pretty important. One of my clients thought that the “Preview” link in Item Settings is actually used to preview a page before it’s published:
Instead this link triggers a 404 error if used before the item/page is published or if the item/page is disabled. Which means there’s no way at the moment to preview something before it’s live on the site (in BC we would save a draft and then preview it).
I installed a workaround for this client (for costum modules) by implementing a preview property (boolean) and filter the list items on the front end.
But we certainly need a proper preview functionality for pages and module items and the option to save a draft. @Peter-Schmidt Can you double check if this is already in the backlog? Couldn’ find it there yet. Thanks!
Fully agree, just chiming in to say – I guess you’re including blog posts here, but it I think it should be specifically mentioned. It is a really basic feature of BC WP etc that is badly needed
PS: I’ve added my vote, important to vote for this
This may be uncouth but I’ve come across a good system for this in another CMS.
A user has three options when saving an item:
Save to live
Save as draft
Save to release
The versions of each file are displayed as a stack in the top right corner. The user who created the draft is shown as the creator of the draft. A note can be added to the draft. Once a draft is saved other users can edit the draft. A draft can be saved to the live page.
Saving to a release.
A user creates a release. A release gets a unique url. When you go to the unique url you see the release version of the website.
When a user edits an item they can save it to a release.
When a release is finalized then a user can publish the release to the live version.
Note: having a way to distinguish between when you’re editing a live item, draft item, item for a release is important. This system uses a colour scheme for each of these. Each release is given a unique colour, so you can tell if you’re editing an item within a release.
The live version can be saved as an archive to allow users to role back to it in case any errors were made.
There is a view to see only the items that have been saved to a release.
The other system I liked the preview and draft mode workflow from was Prismic. Might be worth looking at for a design pattern when this feature is implemented.
