Tellitip 29: Use Preview Mode to Test Site or Blog Facelifts

communityserver What would my blog look like if content boxes were purple?  You can answer that question by simply setting the color and hitting save… but then all of your site visitors will be subjected to your bright pink sidebar before you come to your senses.  You can avoid all that by taking advantage of preview mode and this post tells you how.

The first thing you’ll want to do is sign into your blog admin or site administration panel.

For blogs click to your blog control panel and then click “Change how your blog looks”.  If you are a site admin click “Site Administration” and then click “site theme”. 

Once you see the theme configuration tabs you can known yourself out with changes… just don’t hit save… at least not yet. Click the preview tab instead!

Once you click the preview tab click “enter(or start) preview mode” and then “open a new preview window”. (If you are using a version of CS before CS 2008.1 then you will have to click back to the preview tab between these clicks. 🙂 )

You can go back, make more changes… like a taxi-cab yellow background… and update preview mode and test again.  Once you are happy with the changes you’ve made then you can click… wait for it… Save.

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Should this be the new default theme?  What’s your favorite ugly CS dynamic configuring?