Textpattern CMS

#1 2007-11-23 14:30:43

AlexStacey

Member

Registered: 2007-11-09

Posts: 22

previewing pages in development

Hi,

I’m a bit confused by the Draft, Hidden and Pending statuses and their uses.

I’m working on a page that I’d like to be able to preview in the context of the whole site rather than just the preview within the tp backend but I don’t want it to be public yet…

Any tips on how to do this?

Thanks,

Alex =]

#2 2007-11-23 14:39:49

els

Moderator

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2004-06-06

Posts: 7,458

Re: previewing pages in development

The way I do it is create a section ‘test’ and a page template ‘test’, and use that to try new things. You can either post new articles in section ‘test’ or use txp:article_custom.

Edit: you can also password protect that page.

Last edited by els (2007-11-23 14:40:24)

#3 2007-11-23 14:40:07

iblastoff

Plugin Author

From: Toronto

Registered: 2006-06-11

Posts: 1,197

Website

Re: previewing pages in development

doesn’t fully answer your question but some suggestions by ruud here

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my plugins || iblastoff.ca

#4 2007-11-23 14:47:54

Bloke

Developer

From: Leeds, UK

Registered: 2006-01-29

Posts: 11,449

Website GitHub

Re: previewing pages in development

AlexStacey wrote:

I’m a bit confused by the Draft, Hidden and Pending statuses and their uses.

Yeah, kind of an odd naming convention; never had much use for multiple users pitching in or being notified when a document reaches a certain status.

The (vertical) preview tab on the write tab is supposed to show what the page will look like, but I’ve never had much luck with it, so I do a variant on what everyone else has suggested so far:

1. Create a section called wip or draft or test (or something meaningful to you)
2. Set all attributes for this section, except “Selected by default”, to off
3. Set ‘uses page’ and ‘uses style’ to be exactly the same as the page your site normally uses for displaying articles

Then all new articles will automatically be published (“live”) into this hidden part of the site that hopefully nobody will find (I set a noindex / nofollow meta tag for that section). You can use the ‘View’ link to preview, and when you switch the section of the article to your real section and save, it becomes public.

Never thought of password protecting this area, though. Nice idea Els :-)

Last edited by Bloke (2007-11-23 15:01:45)

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#5 2007-11-23 15:10:18

AlexStacey

Member

Registered: 2007-11-09

Posts: 22

Re: previewing pages in development

Password protection sounds like it could be a good option but where is the option to password protect a page? I can’t see it. I have created a new section and template for this page so it’s not going to be found easily but i just don’t want it to be found by google or anything until i’m ready…

Thanks everyone for the advice! =]

#6 2007-11-23 15:11:40

els

Moderator

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2004-06-06

Posts: 7,458

Re: previewing pages in development

txp:password_protect :)

(and a noindex for robots might also be wise)

#7 2007-11-24 03:26:31

Mary

Sock Enthusiast

Registered: 2004-06-27

Posts: 6,236

Re: previewing pages in development

…is supposed to show what the page will look like…

Actually, Stef, it is only supposed to show you what the article would look like when once parsed by Textile. That’s exactly what it does, so it works just fine.