A quick peek

Pass a page on to external partners in advance for quick coordination? Our ‘preview’ extension can do that.

Just in time for the release of the new TYPO3 version 13LTS, we are publishing our little helper. 

The problem

From time to time, we come across the requirement that content should be shared with external parties before publication. For example, in the case of collaborations with other companies, content should be agreed before publication or external partners should check and approve content in advance.

On-board equipment

Of course, TYPO3 offers a solution out of the box. Editors can log in to the system and then have access to hidden content (also in the front end) to see what this page will look like.

This tool is perfectly adequate when it comes to coordinating and planning website content with other editors. However, as soon as people are added who do not yet have a TYPO3 account, access must also be set up for them and configured with the appropriate rights. Quite a lot of effort for a quick and perhaps one-off coordination.

Ext:Preview

This is where our solution comes in. The Preview extension allows you to generate preview URLs for hidden pages, which can then be easily shared with external partners. Anyone who knows the link can then preview the page - it remains unpublished for everyone else. No TYPO3 accounts need to be created, configured, tested and then deleted.

Instead, any editor can generate a link to an unpublished page in a specific language and copy it to the clipboard. The link will automatically expire after a certain period of time (7 days in the default configuration) and will then be invalidated.

In­stall­a­tion

We created the Extension Preview for a customer a few years ago and used it for several versions. As we think that this extension can be very useful for other TYPO3 installations, we decided to update it for the release of TYPO3 v13 and publish it in the TER (TYPO3 Extension Repository). This meant rewriting some parts of the extension to make it compatible with TYPO3 v13.

Installation is very easy. With 

composer require f7media/preview

the extension is installed. Either via 

typo3 extension:setup

or the TYPO3-Backend Maintenance → Analyze Database Structure a new database table is created in which the preview links are managed.

The extension is then ready for use. In Settings → Extension Configuration → Preview the validity period for the preview links can be adjusted if required. 

Usage

On all pages that are not published (e.g. because they are deactivated or the publication date is in the future), editors can now generate a preview link in the page module or copy this link to the clipboard for forwarding or delete it if it is no longer required.

Conclusion

The Preview extension is a useful little helper that is quickly set up and gives editors the option of allowing people without access to the TYPO3 backend to view unpublished pages. This is helpful for daily proofreading work or for coordination with external partners. 

Extension: extensions.typo3.org/extension/preview

Repository: github.com/f7media/preview