Preview and Publishing

The ability to preview content before publishing is crucial to the success of your digital solutions. As editors, you need to be confident of your changes before they are made public.

Agility provides a built-in content workflow that seamlessly enables editors to preview their changes before they publish. Understanding this concept is important to managing content in the CMS.

Content States

In Agility, there are a number of states in which your Content can be in. Below is an outline of each state and what they mean.

New

A new piece of content that has been initialized but not yet saved of published. This content is not viewable in Preview or on the Live website.

Staging

Content that is staging means it is not yet published. This refers to content that can be viewed in 'Preview' mode but not on the Live website. This is useful when you are making content changes and would like to Preview the changes before publishing them on the live site.

Published

Published means your content is on the latest version, and it is viewable on the Live site.

Previously Published

This state indicates that the current content is published, however, there is content that has been updated that has not yet been published. This content is still viewable in Preview.

Unpublished

Content that is unpublished will not appear on the Live website. Any content that is unpublished will also not be available to Preview.

Why is Preview Important?

Being able to Preview Content prior to Publishing is crucial for Content Editors. Content Previews provides Content Editors with the ability to view Staging Content from the CMS within the context of your website's design.

A Preview Environment should be set up and configured so Content Editors can Preview Content in real-time as they are making edits within Agility CMS. Enabling Previews provides a level of confidence and security in a Content Editors workflow which they've come to expect as standard functionality.

What Can You Preview and Publish?

In Agility CMS, you are able to Preview and Publish the following types of Content:

1. Content Item(s)
2. Content Lists
3. Pages
4. Page Modules

What is The Typical Content Workflow?

New Code or changes to Content Models are typically handled by developers. Content Editors should only have to focus on one thing, the Content!

A typical workflow looks like this:

1. A Content Editor creates and saves a new piece of Content. This Content is placed in a Staging mode, which means it can be previewed for accuracy on the Preview Environment, but is not yet available on the Live (production) website.
2. When ready, the Content Editor Requests Approval to Publish the Content.
3. The designated Approver previews the content on the website and determines whether changes are required or it can be approved.
4. Once Approved, the Content can be Published.
5. Published Content is now shown on the Live website.

Implementing a content workflow such as above allows Content Editors to focus on writing good content while designating an approver to manage if and when content should be published and made available for production. Keep your editors productive, while maintaining a high level of quality control.