Preview sites in WordPress Studio

With WordPress Studio, you can share your work with preview sites. These preview sites are powered by WordPress.com on a temporary domain (wp.build), and they allow you to share snapshots of your local sites with clients or team members. 

You can create up to ten preview sites at a time per WordPress.com account, and you can see how many you’re using in Settings → Sharing and Settings → Usage within the WordPress Studio app.

While preview sites are intended for sharing with clients and gathering early feedback for up to seven days, a hosting plan is required to make your site permanently accessible. Use Publish or Import/Export to move your WordPress Studio site to a hosting plan.

Create a preview site

To create a preview site: 

1. Select the local site within WordPress Studio.
2. Click Share at the top right of the site preview. You can also choose Share from the site menu.
3. Log in to WordPress.com if you haven’t already.
4. Under Share a preview, click Create preview. The button shows Creating preview… while WordPress Studio builds the preview.

Your preview site should be ready to view in a few seconds, and it will be available to access publicly for seven days. You can close the panel while you wait. The Share button shows a spinner while a preview is being created or updated, and a dot when the preview is ready. WordPress Studio also shows a notification when the preview is ready, with a Copy link button.

The Share panel lists the site’s previews, newest first. Each one shows its name and when it expires. Click a preview’s name to open it in your browser. Open its Preview actions (⋯) menu to:

• Update the preview with your latest local changes.
• Copy link to the preview.
• Visit preview in your browser.
• Rename the preview.
• Delete preview.

To create another preview of the same site, click Create another preview below the list.

WordPress Studio can’t create or update a preview when:

• You’ve used all the preview sites available on your account. Delete a preview to make room. You can still copy and update your existing previews.
• Preview sites aren’t available for your account.
• You’re offline. Connect to the internet to create or update a preview.
• The files WordPress Studio would upload are larger than 2 GB. Remove media files, plugins, or themes you don’t need, or exclude them with .deployignore.
• Another operation is running on the site. Wait for it to finish before creating or updating a preview.

Rename a preview site

You can create multiple preview sites per WordPress Studio site. To differentiate between them you can rename them inside WordPress Studio. To do so follow these steps:

1. Select the local site within WordPress Studio, and click Share.
2. Open the Preview actions (⋯) menu next to the preview you want to rename, and choose Rename.
3. In the Rename preview dialog, enter a new name.
4. Click Save.

Your preview site will display that name in WordPress Studio, while your remote preview site name will remain unchanged.

You can also rename any of your previews in Settings → Sharing.

Delete a preview site

To delete a preview site: 

1. Select the local site within WordPress Studio, and click Share.
2. Open the Preview actions (⋯) menu next to the preview you want to delete, and choose Delete preview.
3. In the Delete preview? dialog, click Delete preview to confirm.

Your preview site will be deleted, and its shared link will stop working. You can also delete any of your previews in Settings → Sharing.

Update your preview site

By design, preview sites are generated as one-time “snapshots” of your work. That said, you may synchronize local site changes with your preview site: 

1. Select the local site within WordPress Studio, and click Share.
2. Open the Preview actions (⋯) menu next to the preview you want to update, and choose Update.

Your preview site will be updated with the local changes in a few seconds. While it updates, the Share button shows a spinner. This will also reset the preview site expiration date back to seven days.

Exclude files with .deployignore

When creating or updating a preview site, WordPress Studio uploads the contents of your site’s wp-content directory. If your site contains files you don’t want included — such as build artifacts, vendor dependencies, or large media folders — you can create a .deployignore file at the root of your site directory to exclude them.

The .deployignore file uses the same pattern syntax as .gitignore. For example:

# Exclude vendor dependencies
wp-content/plugins/my-plugin/vendor

# Exclude all log files
*.log

# Exclude old uploads
wp-content/uploads/2024

# Exclude a specific plugin
wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo

You can also use negation patterns to re-include specific items:

# Exclude vendor, but keep important-lib
wp-content/plugins/my-plugin/vendor/*
!wp-content/plugins/my-plugin/vendor/important-lib

Note: Patterns are relative to the site root directory, not to wp-content. The following directories are excluded by default, even without a .deployignore file: .git, node_modules, .DS_Store, and Thumbs.db.

Preview site expiration

Preview sites are temporary, and each preview site will be automatically deleted after seven days from the last update. This feature ensures that preview environments are used for short-term feedback and review purposes.

Expired previews no longer appear in the Share panel. To see them, open Settings → Sharing and click Show expired previews (N), where N is the number of expired previews. They’re listed under Expired previews. Click Remove expired preview next to one to remove it from the list. To share the site again, create a new preview from the Share panel.

Manage all your preview sites

Settings → Sharing lists the live previews of all your sites under Live previews, and how many of your preview sites you’ve used. For each preview, you can click its address to open it, see when it expires, and Copy link, Rename preview, or Delete preview. If you don’t have any live previews, the page shows Share a preview of your site instead.

Delete all preview sites

To quickly delete all of your preview sites within WordPress Studio:

1. Click Settings at the bottom of the sidebar, or press ⌘, (Ctrl+, on Windows and Linux).
2. Select the Usage page. You can also open it by choosing Usage from the account menu. Under Usage, WordPress Studio shows how many active preview sites you have, for example “3 of 10 active preview sites”.
3. Open the Preview site actions (⋯) menu, click Delete all preview sites, and confirm.