What does Share Preview do?

Inventive Share Preview creates a private link for draft, pending-review and scheduled WordPress content. Anyone with the link can see that post until the link expires or you revoke it.

It is a simple way to send a page to a client for approval, ask a colleague to check an article or review scheduled content on the real website before publication.

Plugin features

• Shares draft, pending-review and scheduled content.
• Works with posts, pages and selected registered post types.
• Creates links only when an editor explicitly requests one.
• Lets you choose a link lifetime up to 90 days.
• Creates, regenerates and revokes links without reloading the editor.
• Records who created each new link and when.
• Shows active links in an administrator-only overview.
• Can expire every preview link immediately.
• Redirects old share-preview links to the live page after publication.
• Lets you customise the private-preview banner.
• Prevents caching and asks search engines not to index previews.

Simple settings

Choose which registered post types support preview links and how long each link remains valid. Posts and pages are enabled by default. You can also customise the preview banner, review active links and expire every link immediately.

Clear for reviewers

Every shared page displays a green banner explaining that the visitor is looking at private, unpublished content. The page itself uses the normal website theme, so reviewers see the content in context.

---

Plugin support

Inventive Share Preview is provided free of charge and “as is”, without warranty. You are responsible for testing it on a staging site and confirming that it is suitable for your website before using it in production.

You are welcome to contact Rather Inventive to report a problem or suggest an improvement. Free installation, configuration and troubleshooting support is not included. Paid assistance may be available by arrangement.

Security and privacy

• Preview links use random per-post tokens and constant-time validation.
• Links are created explicitly and can be regenerated or revoked.
• For drafts, expired, revoked or replaced share links redirect to the normal content URL. This does not grant access to the draft; normal WordPress permissions apply. Other invalid links return a 404 response.
• After publication, old share-preview URLs redirect to the public permalink, including expired or revoked links.
• Preview responses are marked noindex, nofollow and noarchive and send private no-cache headers.
• The plugin does not set cookies, load third-party scripts or send preview content to Rather Inventive.

Requirements and limitations

• Requires WordPress 6.2 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.
• Supports draft, pending-review and scheduled content. New share links cannot be created for password protected content. Private and trashed content cannot be viewed using a share link.
• Anyone with a working link can view that individual post, so links should only be sent to intended reviewers.
• Server and CDN caches must exclude /share-preview/ URLs. Analytics and session-recording tools should also be disabled on previews because the URL contains the access token.

Version 1.2 release notes

• Fixed preview links being revoked when saving revisions or autosaves.
• Added draft URL redirects for expired, revoked or replaced links, including custom post types. Normal WordPress access permissions still apply.
• Preserved redirects to the live permalink after publication.