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CMS & Content

Draft Mode

Preview Mode

Portrait of Robert Klimant, co-founder of Roelu Studio
Robert KlimantCo-founder

What is Draft Mode?

Draft mode, also called preview mode, is a CMS feature that lets editors view in-progress content on the live front-end without publishing it. Drafts render in the same templates as live pages but are visible only to logged-in editors or via a special preview link. CMS draft mode is how marketing previews changes before they go public and catches problems before visitors do.

Why it matters

Editing without preview is editing blind. You write a 1,200-word post, you publish it, you discover the hero image is cropped wrong and the CTA broke the layout on mobile. Now visitors are seeing the broken version while you fix it. Draft mode kills that whole class of mistake. The team writes, designs, reviews, and approves — all on the real templates, with real components — before a single visitor sees anything. It also lets non-editors approve work without needing a CMS login. Quality goes up. Embarrassing live edits go to zero.

How it works

Editors create or update content in the CMS and save it as a draft instead of publishing. The front-end exposes a preview route — usually behind authentication or a signed link — that fetches the draft version of the content instead of the published one. The editor or a reviewing stakeholder opens that link and sees the page rendered with the in-progress content. They can adjust, re-preview, and only publish when the work is ready. Modern setups like Next.js paired with Sanity support real-time preview, so changes saved in the CMS appear in the preview window within a second, no page refresh required.

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