Read the draft in the real template

An unpublished draft renders at its real URL for signed-in platform staff only — with a DRAFT banner and a hard noindex — so a post can be judged as a page, not as a textarea.

What it is

The public post route first looks for a published post; if there isn't one, it checks platform access and, only then, loads the draft. A draft renders in the full blog template with a DRAFT PREVIEW banner and metadata that sets index:false, follow:false. No preview token exists, and there is no public URL a search engine could reach.

Also called: preview post · staff preview · see it before it goes live

See it
Read the draft in the real template
Won
32%
Avg cycle
15d
Pipeline
$581k
JanSep
The live post template with the amber DRAFT PREVIEW · NOT PUBLISHED · VISIBLE ONLY TO YOU banner above the title. Sample data — no customer information appears here.
How it works
  1. 1loadPost() tries the published post first, then requires the platform.view capability before loading a draft.
  2. 2A visitor without platform access sees the normal 404.
  3. 3generateMetadata() returns a DRAFT-prefixed title with robots index:false, follow:false for a draft.
  4. 4The page renders the same hero, table of contents, prose styling and closing CTA the live post will have.
Why we built it

The reason is written into the data-access layer: "Keith 08-20: read the draft in the real template before it goes live, instead of judging a post by an admin textarea." The safety condition is stated in the same breath — the caller must have checked platform access first, and "the public page never uses this without that gate." A preview token was deliberately avoided because a token is a URL that can leak.

The problem
  • Drafts could only be judged in a plain editor.
  • Preview links are shareable URLs that search engines can find.
Sound familiar?
What you get
A draft looks exactly like the final page before it ships
No preview token exists to leak
Drafts are hard-noindexed even while staff have them open

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