Previewing An Article In Joomla 1.6

The article pre-view option in Joomla 1.5 was pretty primitive, and has been removed completely in Joomla 1.6. Hence, on the surface it would appear that the only way to view ( pre-view) and an article was:

• Created
• Bound to a menu item
• Displayed on the front end of the Joomla driven website

There is no way of previewing an article, for correcting errors such as typos, bad Grammar, or wrongly positioned images

This could lead to a number of site visitors actually being able to See an awkward looking Joomla page or one that had a few overlooked errors in it.

Issues with previewing an article in Joomla 1.0 and 1.5

In Joomla 1.0 and 1.5, Joomla website developers previewed articles using the Joomla CMS’s native preview menu item as shown in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1

Using this menu item showed a basic, raw display of the article’s content. It wasn’t a full live preview, which is always good to check out before releasing the new article for site visitors. In Joomla 1.6 the Preview menu item has been removed entirely as shown in diagram 2.

Here is a slightly round about, but perfectly good way, of pre-viewing any article in Joomla 1.6 as many times as required. Using Joomla 1.6, vastly improved User Access System ( i.e. UAC ).

Step 1:

Create a new User Access Level.

To create a new UAC, log in as Administrator and navigate to:

Users -> Access Levels - > Add A New Access Level

In the screen that opens up you’ll have to do the following:

• Name the new access level
• Decide what user group you want to be able to see this access level

For our purposes, let’s call the new access level - Preview Only.

Then give only give Super Users ( i.e. Joomla Administrators ) the permission to see anything marked as Preview Only as its access level as shown in diagram 3.

Diagram 3

Step 2:

Write your new article.

Navigate over to the article manager and write a new article. Before you save it, make sure you click the Access drop-down menu and choose the new created access level – Preview Only as shown in diagram 4.

Diagram 4

Step 3:

Create a menu item for your article as you normally do.

Add a new - Single Article - menu item that leads to this new article.

Just make sure you set this menu item’s access level to - Preview Only.

Step 4:

Log in through the front-end and preview your article.

Navigate to the front-end of your Joomla website and log in as Administrator.

You should see a menu link for your article, and you should also be able to view the article itself. No one else will be able to see this menu link or the article.

Once the article has been polished, and it’s ready for publishing, set the article’s access level to - Public.

That’s it! your article preview process is 100% reliable and done.

NOTE: If you’re already logged into your front-end as Administrator, you may have to log out and log back in to get this to work.