The Draft Preview Sandbox
How WPVibe builds and edits in an isolated draft while logged-out visitors keep seeing your live site.
What the draft preview sandbox is
When WPVibe makes changes to your theme, it works in an isolated draft theme. You review the draft through a private preview link. Visitors keep seeing your live site until you publish (one exception with the Site Editor, below).
The preview link is the key. Anyone who opens it sees the draft, logged in or not, until it expires 24 hours after it was made. Share it with a client or a teammate when you want their eyes on the work, and with no one else.
Why it works this way
Building on a live site is risky: half-finished work shouldn’t be public. The sandbox lets the AI build, iterate, and check its own work against a real WordPress environment, while your production site stays untouched until you decide to ship.
How it flows
- Draft: WPVibe creates or edits a draft theme. Nothing public changes.
- Preview: you open the preview link to review the draft in your browser. A banner at the bottom of the page shows you are looking at the draft.
- Publish: when you say go, the draft is promoted to live in one step.
What publishing does with Site Editor changes
On block themes, changes saved in the Site Editor (global styles, templates, template parts) are stored in the database and win over the theme’s own files. Since plugin 1.20.3, publishing handles them for you:
- Saved global styles on the live theme, and saved templates and template parts that the draft also has, are set aside so they no longer override the published files. They are kept, not deleted, and can be brought back. If you would rather keep them in force, tell your AI before it publishes.
Avoid the Site Editor while a preview is open. Some saves there, such as global styles and templates the live theme already customizes, change your live site right away instead of the draft. New templates or template parts you save there land on the draft and go live when you publish. Click End Preview on the preview banner before you go back to editing the live site.
A warning about WordPress.org theme names
If your theme’s folder has the same name as a theme on WordPress.org, a WordPress.org update could replace your custom theme. The preview and the publish result warn you when that is the case. If the theme is now your own design, have your AI add Update URI: false to the theme’s style.css header. That also stops security updates from WordPress.org for it, so only do it once the theme is yours to maintain.
If your site uses SeedProd’s Website Builder
While Enable SeedProd Theme is on in SeedProd > Website Builder, SeedProd shows its own site in place of your theme. Since plugin 1.20.4, the preview still shows your draft theme, because WPVibe sets SeedProd aside for the preview only.
Publishing does not turn the Website Builder off. After you publish, the SeedProd site keeps showing in place of your theme until you turn off Enable SeedProd Theme in SeedProd > Website Builder. The preview banner and the publish result both remind you.
Good to know
- Preview links expire after 24 hours, so ask your AI for a fresh one anytime.
- Preview pages tell hosts, caching plugins and CDNs not to cache them (plugin 1.20.4 and later), so a reload shows your latest edit. If a preview still shows an older copy, purge your cache and reload.
- Some managed hosts, WP Engine among them, don’t let WordPress create PHP files. On those hosts WPVibe can’t create a draft theme and tells you so. Changing file permissions won’t help: edit theme files with your host’s file manager, SFTP or Git instead. Content, settings and Customizer changes through WPVibe still work.
- On WordPress.com, and on some other hosts, your active theme is a link to a folder the host manages. WPVibe can’t make a draft copy of a theme like that and tells you so (plugin 1.21.6 and later). If you want a theme WPVibe can edit, your AI can build a new one.
- WPVibe won’t publish a theme unless you explicitly tell it to.