[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] Preview mode usage

  • Resolved huyz

    (@huyz)


    12 years, 10 months ago

    The Preview mode buttons are confusing.

    The 3 buttons “Disable”, “Preview”, and “Deploy” do very different things. Yet they sit right next to each other with the “Disable” button highlighted.

    – Enable/Disable: toggles preview mode
    – Preview: launches a separate page. This is confusing because I’m already in Preview mode. So why would I hit Preview again. Maybe this should say “Preview new settings”?
    – Deploy: seems to be equivalent to hitting Disable (which deploys) and then Enable again. Or maybe “Disable” doesn’t deploy, and I have to hit “Deploy” before I hit “Disable”; otherwise I lose all my changes. So I’m not sure if this button is necessary. Another way to look at it is: if “Deploy” is a sort of “Save settings”, then does “Disable” auto-save?

    The top of the settings page doesn’t help much:

    Preview mode is active: Changed settings will not take effect until preview mode is “Disable” or “Deploy”. “Preview” any changed settings (without deploying), or make additional changes.

    How can “preview mode” be “deploy”?. That doesn’t make much sense: new settings or changes can be deployed, but not a mode. “Disabled”, I can understand because that’s a state that a mode can be in. But “deploy” is not a state, it’s an action — which only applies to settings.
    Plus the grammar is confusing without “d” and “ed”.

    Maybe it should say:

    Preview mode is active: you can make changes to the settings and check the effects by hitting “Preview new settings”. Changed settings will not be deployed for your visitors until you “Disable” preview mode. To deploy your new settings but keep preview mode active, just click “Deploy”.

    I would also rename the “Disable” button to “Deploy + Disable”. Then the relationship between “Disable” and the “Deploy” button would be clearer.
    (Unless I completely misinterpreted the buttons, of course)

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    12 years, 9 months ago

    When preview mode is active, only deployed settings are visible to users. Deactivating preview mode doesn’t deploy your last previewed settings. When you save settings in preview mode they are instantly available for review.

    Alaskan

    (@alaskan)

    12 years, 4 months ago

    huyz is completely correct on all points. The explanation and the bad grammar is extremely confusing.

    Please consider modifying the documentation and changing the button text to make sense in English. As the first thing a new user sees after installation, it’s really unsettling.

    Plugin Contributor Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    12 years, 2 months ago

    This feedback doesn’t address the work flow issue. What do people propose as the ideal workflow?

    Keryn

    (@b-summers)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    I am also confused by this.

    So if i hit “disable”, does that make all my settings “live”? Or do I have to hit DEPLOY, and then DISABLE the preview mode?

    I’m not sure about the work flow, but I would definitely have a SAVE or MAKE LIVE button of some sort, so it’s clear that your changes are now LIVE and not merely “disabled” or in “preview” mode.

    Plugin Contributor Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    Preview settings are saved separately from your active settings, so disabling preview mode does not make your preview settings live. Deploy makes preview settings live.

    Keryn

    (@b-summers)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    Okay, that might make sense as to why my site is still really slow.

    One more question…how do you actually “DEPLOY” the darn thing? Every time I press “deploy” it takes me to a page that says “Are you sure you want to do this”, and the only thing on that page you can click is “please try again”. so DEPLOY seemingly never works anyways, which is why I disabled preview mode, because I thought that’s what you had to do seeing as you can’t “deploy” the site.

    It also says: “Changed settings will not take effect until preview mode is DEPLOY or DISABLE.”

    Which to me also means all you have to do is disable preview mode to make your settings live. If that is not true, then i would re-word it, as it’s VERY confusing.

    peter achutha

    (@peter-achutha)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    I could not view your site as you had given the URL.

    I spent sometime speeding up my very slow site but I never touched anything to do with preview. When ever I did some changes and wanted to see how much of an improvement there was I cleared all my caches… even my browser cache then visited my site a few times.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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