When editing content in the WordPress editor, you can use the preview option to view how it will be displayed in your site’s theme. This guide will show you how to preview your pages and posts to check how your changes will look on your website.
In this guide
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Ask our AI assistantThe page and post content of your site is added and edited from the WordPress editor, but the way that content is displayed on your site is controlled by your site’s theme. Preview a page or post to view how your site displays your content with all of the formatting elements of your theme applied.
You can preview a page or post from the editor by following these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Click on Pages or Posts.
- Click on the title of the page or post you want to preview to open it in the editor.
- Click on the “View” icon (it looks like an open laptop) at the top of the screen, next to the “Publish” button (or “Save” button if the page/post is already published.)
- Select “Preview in new tab“.
A preview of your page or post will open in a new browser tab to display how the content will look on your site. If you make any changes in the editor after previewing, you’ll need to click “Save draft” (for draft posts) or “Save” (for published posts) and refresh the preview tab in your browser to view the changes applied to the page or post preview.
You can also use the View menu to change the format the WordPress editor uses to display your content by following these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Click on Pages or Posts.
- Click on the title of the page or post you want to preview to open it in the editor.
- Click on the “View” icon (the silhouette of an open laptop) at the top of the screen, next to the “Publish” button.
- Select the “Desktop“, “Tablet“, or “Mobile” option in the View menu.
You can enable or disable the option to show the template when editing a page or a post. Showing the template is a great way to see how your content fits within your site’s design. Or, turn the template preview off for distraction free editing.
To enable or disable template preview, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Click on Pages or Posts.
- Click on the title of the page or post you want to preview to open it in the editor.
- Click on the “View” icon (it looks like an open laptop) at the top of the screen, next to the “Publish” button (or “Save” button if the page/post is already published.)
- Select “Show template”.
If you see a check mark next to “Show template” the template preview is on. If there is no check mark next to “Show template”, then the template preview is off and you are looking at just your page or post’s content.
You will not see the option to show the template if you are editing a template directly. For example, in many themes, the homepage itself is a template.
The following video demonstrates how to preview the page template from the WordPress editor. When the “Show template” option is selected, the header and footer will display in the editor, showcasing how the full page looks on the site.