Previewing content on site before going live

Question

I'm currently looking for a neat way to preview content before it gets set live. The ideal setup would be to have a status "draft" that is shown on the frontend to super-admin and maybe other CMS user groups if setup.

I've played with the live look feature but I think it would be nicer to switch the status parameter in the tags depending on the user logged in group_id.

The problem I have come up against is the parsing order.

This post looks like its doing exactly what I want http://themetaq.com/articles/a-better-way-to-preview-entries-in-expressionengine but couldn't get this to work.

I want to keep this as out of the box as possible, rather than a using an add-on.

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Edited]

If you are using Low Variables (or some other add-on) that allows global variables to be parsed early, you can do this...

--ORIGINAL POST--

The way to do this without an add-on is to use a snippet with simple conditionals.

Create a snippet sn-statuses with:

{if logged_in_member_id == "1"}Open|Draft{/if} 
{if logged_in_member_id != "1"}Open{/if}

Then, in your template, pull in the snippet:

{exp:channel:entries channel="my_channel" status="{sn-statuses}"}

Answer 2

I prefer to always work without add-ons, if I can.

I use to create a snippet with this code and put it inside the exp:channel:entries:

{if status !="open" OR entry_date > current_time}
    {if author_id != logged_in_member_id AND logged_in_group_id != 1}
        {redirect="404"}
    {/if}
{/if}

If open isn't the only status the users can see, you can improve the code:

{if status != "open" && status != "featured" OR entry_date > current_time}
    {if author_id != logged_in_member_id AND logged_in_group_id != 1}
        {redirect="404"}
    {/if}
{/if}

I prefer to check for status that are different for the open ones because, sometimes, a new one can be created and maybe it shouldn't be viewed yet.

Answer 3

The Stash method.

(I know you want an add-on-free version, but why? Stash is free, supported, and helps with performance.)

Toward the top of your template set the statuses based on the group_id of logged in member.

{exp:stash:set name="statuses"}{if group_id == "1" || group_id == "6"}open|draft{if:else}open{/if}{/exp:stash:set}

Then get that variable in your channel entries tag pair.

{exp:channel:entries status="{exp:stash:get name='statuses' parse_tags='yes' parse_conditionals='yes'}" channel="my_channel" dynamic="no" parse="inward"}
  {exp:stash:set_list name="blog_listing" parse_tags="yes"}
   ....

Answer 4

I have developed a small add-on for this. It essentially creates/turns some user variables into early global config vars

This extension adds logged_in_member_id and logged_in_group_id to the global variables array so they are parsed early and can be used in simple conditionals.

  {if logged_in_member_id != "0"}
    {exp:channel:entries status="open|members_only"}
    ...
    {/exp:channel:entries}
  {/if} 
  {if logged_in_member_id == "0"}
    {exp:channel:entries status="open"}
    ...
    {/exp:channel:entries}
  {/if}

If you rely, for some reason, on logged_in_member_id being parsed late, the extension also adds global_member_id and global_group_id for convenience.

http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/global-member-vars