What is your developer-dependent CMS actually costing you? Calculate your costs and get a full report
What is your developer-dependent CMS actually costing you? Calculate your costs and get a full report
Content
Send a colleague or client a link to your unpublished changes. Copy the link from the Preview button or from Web Studio. They don't need an Agility account.
A preview link opens your saved changes on the real website, in the reviewer's own browser, before you publish them. Use it to get feedback or sign-off from colleagues, clients and approvers.
Preview links only work once your developer has set up a preview site for Agility. If you've never seen a preview of your website from Agility, start with Previewing Content.
A preview link shows the last saved version of your content. Copy Preview Link doesn't save for you, so click Save first. Anything you've typed but not saved won't be in the preview.
What the link opens depends on what you copied it from:
| You copied it from | The link opens |
|---|---|
| A page | That page on your preview site. |
| A component on a page | The page the component sits on. |
| A content item, such as a blog post | The page your developer set up to show that kind of item. |
| A content list | The page your developer set up to show that list. |
The Preview button only appears once an item has been saved at least once. If you've just created something, save it first.
If you're already working in Web Studio:
The link opens the page you were looking at.
Use the copy icon. Don't type out the address you can see at the top of Web Studio. That address leaves out the part of the link that turns preview on, so it would show the published page instead.
The site in that list may be called Production. In normal Web Studio view, the copy icon still gives you a preview link. If you've switched Web Studio to Live mode, it copies the public link to the published page instead.
| Preview link | Live link | |
|---|---|---|
| How to get it | Copy Preview Link, or the copy icon in Web Studio | View in Live Mode in the same menu |
| What it shows | Saved changes that aren't published yet | Only what's published |
| Who can open it | Anyone you send it to | Anyone. It's your public website |
| Use it for | Getting feedback or sign-off before you publish | Sharing a page that's already live |
Anyone who has a preview link can open it, including anyone it gets forwarded to. Preview links don't expire, and they show all unpublished content on your site, not just the page you shared. So:
All preview links for your site share one key, so you can't switch off a single link. If a link has gone somewhere it shouldn't, ask your developer to change your instance's Security Key (in Settings › API Keys) and update your website with the new one. Every preview link shared before then stops working. Links you copy afterwards work as normal.
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A message saying Deployment Configuration Required for Preview, or no Preview button at all | Your site doesn't have a preview site set up yet | Ask your developer to set one up. Send them this: "Please mark one of our deployments as the Preview Deployment in Settings › Sitemaps. See Setting Up Preview." |
| The link opens the home page instead of your content item | No preview page has been set up for that list | Ask your developer: "Please set the Item Preview Page for the [list name] list, in the list's Developer Settings." |
| The reviewer sees the old version | The changes weren't saved, or their page was loaded before you saved | Click Save, then ask them to refresh. |
| The reviewer sees the published page, or a "page not found" for something new | The link was retyped or shortened, or it was copied in Web Studio's Live mode | Copy the link again with Copy Preview Link and send it unchanged. |
| The reviewer is asked to sign in to something that isn't Agility, or sees an "unauthorized" error | Your preview site has extra protection in front of it | Ask your developer whether reviewers outside your team can open the preview site. |
| Nothing happens when you click the copy icon in Web Studio | Agility couldn't work out a link for that page | Close Web Studio, open the page in the editor, and use Copy Preview Link instead. |
