Preview / Publish Mode (aka publish test shop)

162 votes

So you could preview your shop and then when you are ready to publish your changes you simply press a button!

No more copy and pasting from the test shop.

Planned Settings Suggested by: Antony (23 Oct, '18) • Upvoted: 19 Feb • Comments: 18

Comments: 18

09 Nov, '18
Anthony Merged
I would love to change my website, take time doing it on the test shop to get it how I want it and then be able to publish it.
At the moment this isn't possible and it would be a great feature.
13 Nov, '18
Moderator Admin
"Publish Test Shop Option" (suggested by Anthony on 2018-11-09), including upvotes (8) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
28 Jan, '19
RCToyWorld
This would be very useful. All the time spent getting the TEST shop correct then needs to be manually applied to the live shop. Goodness knows what customers think or see when they see the live shop changing bit by bit before their eyes. Just doesn't seem very professional, so a way to "schedule" the update of the live shop from the TEST shop would be fantastic.
21 Feb, '19
Carmen Byrne
This would be extremely beneficial as I have been trying to change my site Template, however it looks a mess in the test shop and would require alot of work. If it was possible to create my new shop in the test site then make it live that would be an amazing feature. I also believe it would be very appealing to potential EKM customers,* Change your site behind the scenes then at the click of a button make it live. A whole new site with no interference to your current website*
16 Apr, '19
Anthony
When do we find out if it may happen or not?
23 Apr, '19
Carmen Byrne
Any progress?
30 Jul, '19
Tom
I can't believe that this isn't how the test shop currently works. When making changes to your store, It seems very unprofessional having to do it to a live website bit by bit. There needs to be an option to publish the test shop to the live shop.
19 Sept, '19
Peter Dermott Merged
Currently when working on a test shop it is a manual process to copy all of the content over to the live shop in order to make the changes live, this is fragile and can be error prone as things will often get missed and a log of the changes made has to be kept in the developers head.

Instead, it would be great if we could use the admin system to promote the changes that we have made over from the test shop to the live shop.
04 Dec, '19
Barrie Merged
At present when I'm happy with a TEST site with it's new images, text, layout etc.. I still need to replicate that manually to the live site.

A publish function to copy the exact setup of the test site to the live site with a schedule function. e.g. can update live site at 3am.

This i guess should apply to just the site design and not the product/categories.
29 Jun, '20
Eve Bolan Admin
"TEST Site Publish" (suggested by Barrie on 2019-12-04), including upvotes (14) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
29 Jun, '20
Eve Bolan Admin
"Make test shops easier to deploy" (suggested by Peter Dermott on 2019-09-19), including upvotes (14) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
09 Jul, '20
Dan
This is such an important feature!! We must be able to implement changes without the interface changing for customers while they're browsing and potentially discouraging them from purchasing. Once the website has been updated in test mode and published live, the website would be up to a customers standard and therefore they would not think it's a 'half-job'.
24 Sept, '20
James TC
This is probably the most lacking feature from the EKM platform that is so desperetly needed! It is very unproffessional to have to manually change a project that is live to the public.. I am a web developer and I would never do this on clients code.. nevermind a fully functioning web store.
22 Jun, '21
Chris
Our site is in need of an updated theme, but we have implemented a number of tweaks over the years & attempting to get all those re-instated within the current Test Shop system would be a nightmare, so we're holding off. Would love to see Publish Test Shop implemented. We'd be able to work on a new store theme in the background, get it right & then publish. We could even promote "new look store coming on -- date ---"
13 Oct, '21
Damian
Having this feature would have saved hours of trying to get everything set up correctly again! It's a shame that there are people from two years ago who are asking if there's any progress, especially on such a popular suggestion
27 Jan, '23
Tom
I can see that this is now a planned feature. Is there any news on when this will actually be coming? Our website is overdue a massive overhaul, but we have been putting it off now for a long time due to the complexity and time involved in manually recreating the test environment back on the live one.

This is a sorely needed feature, and I'm surprised it hasn't been released yet. It seems that as of late, EKM have been rather stale in releasing new and majorly needed features for their platform, and unfortunately it's making their competitors look more viable.

Hopefully this is something that gets released soon.
29 Jun, '23
Gareth
This is not an option still?! This should surely be a standard feature for any website content management system if a Test Shop is available.
15 Aug, '23
Will
Hey EKM do we have a release date for this yet??