Public Link Preview

Share a secret public link to preview any draft, pending, or scheduled WordPress post or page — no login required. The link stays live indefinitely until you turn it off from the editor.

By Ryan Bollenbach · ryan@boompah.com

How it works

The plugin adds an Enable public preview link toggle right next to the publish controls on every post and page:

• Block editor: a toggle in the Status & Visibility panel of the post sidebar.
• Classic editor: a labeled checkbox inside the Publish box.

Flip it on and you get a shareable URL that lets anyone — no WordPress account needed — view the unpublished post. Flipping it off invalidates the link immediately; re-enabling generates a brand-new URL.

Features

• Works for drafts, pending, and scheduled posts, pages, and any public custom post type.
• Links never expire — they work until you disable them on the post itself.
• One-click copy button for the preview URL.
• Enabling/disabling takes effect immediately, without saving the post.
• Secret 32-character token, compared in constant time. Disabling deletes the token, so old links can never come back to life.
• Preview pages send no-cache headers, are flagged noindex for search engines, and have comments and pings closed.
• No settings page, no database tables — just two post meta fields, cleaned up on uninstall.

Installation

1. Copy this folder into wp-content/plugins/public-link-preview/ (or install the zip via Plugins → Add New → Upload).
2. Activate Public Link Preview on the Plugins screen.
3. Edit any unpublished post or page, find Public preview link next to the publish controls, and switch it on.
4. Copy the link and share it.

Requirements

• WordPress 5.8+
• PHP 7.2+

Security notes

• The toggle endpoint requires a nonce and the edit_post capability for the specific post.
• The front-end token check uses hash_equals() and only ever exposes draft, pending, and future posts.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. This is free, open source software.