Quick Preview
Quick Preview lets you preview changes directly from the Magento admin — without creating a release first. It's ideal for rapid iteration: make an edit, preview it on the frontend, adjust, and preview again. When you're happy, you can stage the change to a release.
How it works
Quick Preview creates a temporary, behind-the-scenes preview that exists solely for your current editing session. No release is created, and no changes are saved to MageDrop until you explicitly stage them.
- Open an entity in Magento admin (e.g. a CMS page or CMS block).
- Make your changes in the form.
- Click the Quick Preview button in the top button bar.
- A modal dialog appears with an Open Preview button.
- Click Open Preview to open a new browser tab showing the frontend with your changes applied.
No release needed
Unlike the standard preview flow (which requires staging changes to a release first), Quick Preview works independently:
- You don't need to create a release.
- You don't need to stage anything.
- The preview is created from your current form state — whatever's in the admin form at the moment you click Quick Preview.
Behind the scenes, the module sends the form data to the MageDrop SaaS, which creates a temporary preview session. This is transparent to you — it just works.
The preview modal
When you click Quick Preview, a modal dialog appears containing:
- A confirmation message that your preview is ready.
- An Open Preview button that opens the frontend preview in a new tab.
- The preview URL, which you can copy if needed.
The modal stays open so you can return to it. Your changes in the admin form are preserved — nothing is lost or reset when you trigger Quick Preview.
Iterating with Quick Preview
Quick Preview is designed for rapid iteration:
- Make an edit in the admin form.
- Click Quick Preview and check the frontend.
- Go back to the admin tab and adjust your changes.
- Click Quick Preview again — the preview updates with your latest form data.
- Repeat until you're satisfied.
- When ready, use Save & Stage from the MageDrop dropdown to save the changes to a release.
Preview expiry
Quick Preview sessions are temporary and expire automatically:
- A quick preview expires after 2 hours from creation.
- After expiry, the preview link will no longer show your changes — you'll see the normal live content.
- You can generate a new quick preview at any time by clicking the Quick Preview button again.
This automatic expiry ensures that temporary previews don't accumulate and consume resources indefinitely.
Quick Preview vs. Release Preview
| Feature | Quick Preview | Release Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Requires a release | No | Yes |
| Requires staging | No | Yes |
| Shows multiple entities | Single entity only | All staged changes in the release |
| Shareable | Not intended for sharing | Yes — shareable preview links |
| Expiry | 2 hours | Lifetime of the release |
| Use case | Rapid iteration during editing | Final review before deploy |
Supported entity types
Quick Preview is available on the same edit pages where the MageDrop button appears:
- CMS Page Edit
- CMS Block Edit