WordPress 2.2: Bring The Post Preview Back

May 27th, 2007

WordPress post preview link

With WordPress 2.2 comes the introduction of the post preview link to replace the in-line preview that used to appear whenever you saved a post.

To me, being able to preview my posts is an essential part of blogging. This most recent feature seems counter-productive to me because:

The old in-line preview was loaded as an separate page within a frame so your most of your main page is still going to load relatively quickly anyway.
As long as your Internet connection will allow you to download two separate pages concurrently then you shouldn’t really notice much of a speed difference.
To preview a post, I now have to click an extra link and switch to the tab/window that the preview opens up in.

Enough Bitching, Let’s Get In-Line Preview Back

If, like me, you preferred having the in-line preview in your post editing page then here’s how you can get it back:

Open up your post.php file from your wp-admin directory.
Navigate to approximately line 63 and find the following line of code:
Code:
include('edit-form-advanced.php');

Directly underneath that line, add the following code:

Code:



?>
<div id='preview' class='wrap'>
<h2 id="preview-post"><?php _e('Post Preview (updated when post is saved)'); ?></h2>
<iframe src="<?php echo clean_url(apply_filters('preview_post_link', add_query_arg('preview', 'true', get_permalink($post->ID)))); ?>" width="100%" height="600" ></iframe>
</div>
<?php

Save your changes to post.php.
Upload the amended post.php to the wp-admin directory of your WordPress installation.
There is no step 6!

Happy previewing!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 7:16 pm and is filed under How To, Webmaster.
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12 Responses to “WordPress 2.2: Bring The Post Preview Back”

sarahG said on May 27th, 2007 at 9:21 pm

Have to agree, it’s not as good without the preview below. I’ve also found the permalinks in WP 2.2 (for setting up new blogs) are a bit iffy as they don’t see to write to the htaccess so I’ve set this up on 4 blogs in the past fortnight (3 were upgrades/server moves) and found myself copying the old WP htaccess code from another site. It wrecked my own site for a while as I kept making mistakes!

Perhaps if there’s enough call for it, they’ll move the preview back.
Joem said on May 28th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

I agree. I want the post preview to return in Wordpress 2.2. I hate having to re-edit my post several times whenever I see something wrong with my new post. I post daily to my Internet marketing blog so having the post preview back would make my life a bit easier.
Niche Content Blog said on June 2nd, 2007 at 6:03 pm

Thanks for that. WP 2.2 is another ‘upgrade’ that took away a great feature.
Sami said on June 3rd, 2007 at 10:37 am

Thanks for that code snippet! Very useful, I was surprised and disappointed to see that the in-line preview had been removed - it’s annoying to have to work nice features back in after an “upgrade”..
Joe said on June 17th, 2007 at 5:33 pm

Hey Will,
Thank you , thank you, thank you…
I think you get the idea. I really missed my post preview and now it’s back!
Joe
Matt said on July 28th, 2007 at 1:38 am

Thanks a lot! Saved a lot of pain!
Roy said on November 7th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

Wow,

What an excellent tips you shared. I believe many wordpress users are very satisfied with your “preview” secret. Thank you very much. I am going to edit my wordpress now. Thanks so much for your info. Saved me lots of pain too.
Will said on November 7th, 2007 at 5:14 pm

You’re welcome, Roy

Just remember that you’ll need to edit the post.php/page.php each time you upgrade.