Support/How to preview content safely

How to preview content safely

Use browser-local preview snapshots to check saved content or unsaved changes without saving, publishing, or deploying.

Use Preview when you want to check how a mapped post reads before you save or run a workflow action.

BaseBuddy Preview is a browser-local snapshot. It opens the current post in a separate preview tab from your browser's local storage. It is not a public website preview, deploy preview, rebuild, webhook, or publishing pipeline.

Before you preview

Open a mapped post in BaseBuddy and review the editor state.

Mapped post editor with Save, Archive, and Publish actions visible

Preview is safe to use because it does not write to your database. Opening a preview should not save dirty fields, publish content, unpublish content, archive content, update workflow fields, or trigger a deploy.

The preview snapshot can include unsaved changes from the current editor session. That lets you review edits before deciding whether to write them.

Open a preview

Open the post you want to review.
Make any edits you want to inspect, or leave the post unchanged if you only want to review the saved version.
Click Preview in the editor sidebar.
Allow pop-ups for the BaseBuddy site if your browser blocks the new tab.
Review the preview tab.

The preview tab shows the post title, excerpt, content, status, preview time, and path. If the snapshot includes dirty editor values, the tab shows Unsaved changes included.

Editor with one dirty field and Save enabled

Understand what Preview does

Preview copies the current editor state into a local snapshot in your browser. BaseBuddy then opens a preview URL with a token that reads that snapshot from the same browser.

Action	What happens
Click `Preview` with no edits	Opens a browser-local snapshot of the current post values
Click `Preview` with dirty fields	Opens a browser-local snapshot that includes those unsaved editor values
Close the preview tab	Leaves the database unchanged
Refresh an old preview later	May show `Preview unavailable` after the snapshot expires or is cleared

Preview snapshots are local to the browser that opened them. Sending the preview URL to someone else will not give them a public preview of your site.

Save only when you are ready

If the preview looks right, return to the editor and click Save or Update when you are ready to write ordinary content edits.

Save and Update write dirty mapped fields only. They do not publish, unpublish, archive, reshape JSON, rewrite relations, convert storage formats, or deploy your public website as a hidden side effect.

If you are changing workflow state, use the explicit workflow action instead:

Goal	Use
Write ordinary dirty fields on a draft	`Save`
Write ordinary dirty fields on a published post	`Update`
Make a draft public according to your mapping	`Publish`
Return published content to draft according to your mapping	`Unpublish`
Move content to the mapped archived state	`Archive`

Refresh the snapshot

Preview is a snapshot, not a live mirror of the editor.

If you keep editing after opening the preview tab, return to BaseBuddy and click Preview again. The new tab uses a fresh browser-local snapshot with the latest editor state.

If Preview is unavailable

If the preview tab says Preview unavailable, open Preview again from the editor.

Common causes:

Symptom	What to do
The preview tab does not open	Allow pop-ups for your BaseBuddy URL and click `Preview` again
The tab says `Preview unavailable`	The browser-local snapshot expired, was cleared, or the token is missing
Someone else cannot open the preview link	Open Preview in their own BaseBuddy session instead of sharing the local token URL
The preview does not show your latest edits	Return to the editor and click `Preview` again