Live preview
Design decisions are expensive when you cannot see the result. The live preview removes the cost: every theme, palette and mode renders with your actual content — instantly, before anything publishes.
What the preview shows
Not a mock. The preview pipes YOUR site — your name, your links, your posts, your services — through the same renderer the public site uses. The theme you are judging is the theme your visitors would get, down to the components.
| You are deciding | The preview shows |
|---|---|
| Theme | Your whole home page in that theme |
| Palette | Your content in your colors |
| Dark mode | Both modes, side by side |
| Fonts | Your real headings in the real typeface |
How to use it well
- Judge with your content, not the demo's. A theme that flatters placeholder text can fight your actual photos; the preview exists precisely because of that gap.
- Preview at phone width first. Most visitors meet your site on one. A layout that only works wide is a layout that does not work.
- Check both modes. Toggle dark in the preview — a palette that sings in light can whisper in dark, and you want to know before publishing, not after a DM says "your site is unreadable at night".
- Read one full page. Not just the hero — scroll a post, a service, a contact page. Themes show their character in the details.
The publish boundary
The preview changes NOTHING public. Appearance choices go live when you apply/publish them — the boundary is deliberate (see Editing pages for the whole draft/publish split). This is why trying five themes in five minutes is safe: four of them were never live anywhere.
Tip
Screenshot the two finalists on your phone and sleep on it. The preview makes decisions so cheap that the risk inverts: the danger is not choosing wrong, it is changing your mind nightly. Live with the screenshot for a day.
Where preview ends
The preview covers appearance. It does NOT cover: plugin behavior specific to live traffic (analytics, forms submitting), your custom domain rendering, or third-party embeds that need network calls to load — for those, publish and check on the real page; unpublishing is one click if something disappoints.
The compounding habit
Designers preview before committing; so should you. The loop is seconds long: change → look → keep or revert. Sites that get previewed get coherent — not because their owners have taste, but because they looked before they shipped.
Note
The preview is also the safe space for bold experiments — the wildcard palette, the huge type. Try it in preview; if it delights you at phone width in both modes, publish it. If it does not, nobody ever knew.