Like to try some plugins for your Weebly Site but are hesitating to publish them without actually seeing them in action ? You Are Not Alone !!

The lack of a “Preview” option in Weebly is the cause for some trouble. It’s not an issue .. until you want to try some thing like the Nivo Slider. You can not really see it in action in the Weebly Editor. And you can’t risk publishing it to your live site without knowing if it works exactly the way you want it to. This article is our attempt at bridging the gap.

No Preview, is compounded by the absence of versioning. Let’s say you took the risk and published it. What do you do if the images of the slider are not the right size ? There is no Undo button, forcing you to manually revert all the changes.

Following procedure will help you ease the situation. This article is for those users who are familiar with page types in Weebly. If you do not know what page types are, please check the article about Page Types in Weebly.

The process involves copying the page type you want to modify and copying the page where you would like to try the new plugin. This creates a test area for your site.

Step 1: Copying the Page Type In Weebly Theme Editor

If you need to add code to a page type under Edit HTML/CSS (like the Step 4 of Nivo Slider Tutorial), you need to copy the corresponding page type first. To do this, click “Add new type” and add a page called “Test Page Type”

The new page type created comes with some default code. Delete all of it. Now copy the entire contents of index.html or other page type and paste it into the new test-page-type.html. You have now successfully created a new test-page-type that you can play with.

Step 2: Copy the Page From Weebly Editor

From the “Pages” tab, highlight the page you would like to try the plugin on, and “Copy Page” (say for example, Nivo Slider Test Page). This will copy all the contents of your page to your test page giving you all the opportunity to try new plugin.

For the new page, select the new page type created in Step 1. Remeber to Hide the page from menu. You now have a replica of the page using a replica of the page type. Any thing you do in this test page or the test page type, does not effect your other pages even when published.

Step 3: Port your changes to your real pages

Once you are happy with the changes, you can now port the changes to your page and page type.

[Note: Though it looks complex the first time you do, it is fairly easy if you have an understanding of what a "Page Type" is in Weebly]