Have you ever stared at your computer, wondering how you could get the promised, pre-published post to your internal or external client or a guest blogger without giving them a login? Passing out WordPress logins or creating a demo login around the office or to your clients doesn’t end up working well.
The Public Post Preview plugin provides the needed option for you, allowing you to share a blog before publication with someone, without giving them access to anything else. They simply see the preview through the URL.
This plugin allows you to activate a private link for WordPress posts and share them while in draft mode. You can send these links to someone without the need of the guest logging in. This is great news for marketing teams creating content and needing quick approval, or an editorial team sharing content between other departments.
Overview of Public Post Preview
The hottest way to grow traffic is through content marketing, and businesses are investing in content creation more than ever. As easy as WordPress is to use for publishing posts to the company blog, it’s not always as seamless for sharing unpublished content to non-logged in users.
Publishing workflows sell big in larger CMS’s for those working within a team. WordPress, unfortunately, doesn’t have a strong grip on this feature. The simple act of sharing a draft without needing to login makes getting those last minute approvals much easier.
Public Post Preview, while a small plugin, makes a big splash.
Installing Public Post Preview
Download Public Post Preview WordPress plugin
There’s not much to do, to get this plugin up and running. Simply search for it in the repo, install, then activate. Once you have done that, you’ll have the metabox on every post for sharing a private draft:
Who is Public Post Preview for?
Anyone wanting to share a draft saved in WordPress without creating an account login.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll often draft a post and wish I could get an extra set of eyes on it. However, that requires I setup a new user account, get someone to login, find the draft, and then remember to remove that account.
Whoa — too much work.
Public Post Preview makes this a breeze — no account required.
Useful for:
- Ghost bloggers
- Content marketers
- Team collaboration
- Your everyday blogger
Pros:
#1 The public post preview is a lightweight plugin.
#2 It involves a very easy install and setup.
#3 A painless copy/pasting of the link to share.
No fuss. And for a simple need like the post preview, it should be easy!
Cons:
Overall, the Public Post Preview is a straightforward plugin, so I’m not expecting much. It would be great to have some additional choices like a feedback option for non-logged in users.
Wrapping up
It is a simple, no-frills plugin designed to serve a specific need, providing a temporary preview to select guests on your site! I’m interested what other needs would this plugin serve for you? What benefits would it provide?
Will this be picked up in Search Results / Indexed by Google? Or are there settings that you can enable to prevent indexing of these unpublished pages?
These are unpublished pages.