Viewing the draft site
There are three views associated with your SilverStripe website, the:
- SilverStripe CMS
- draft site
- published site
Whereby the CMS interface enables you to access and work with the nuts and bolts of your website content, the draft site enables you to assess the appearance and functionality of the website before it is published and goes live. The draft site also enables you to work on your website without disrupting users, as changes made within the CMS are initially saved to the draft site only. Due to the independent nature of the draft and published sites, their content may not always match. Pages that you change on the draft site need to be uploaded to the published site for the sites to appear synchronised.
The draft site is simply accessed by clicking on the Draft Site tool at the bottom of the window.
- Click on the Draft Site tool
The draft site will be displayed in a separate window. There are now two indicators that you are viewing the draft site: the “Draft Site” tool is displayed as the active tool (i.e. the text is bold) and a red “Draft Site” box appears at the top of the window…
You are able to navigate the draft site, just as you would a live web site, thereby testing the functionality and design of the pages.
To return to the CMS window you can either close the draft site window, or leave it open and switch between the two windows… - Click on Close
to close the draft site window
OR
Click on the CMS tool
at the bottom of the draft site window to switch to the CMS window
If the information in the current window is lengthy, you will need to scroll to the bottom of that window to view the CMS, Draft Site and Published Site tools.
