Whenever you complete a successful Site build, CloudCannon will automatically generate a webpage preview for every output file as it appears on the Internet.
CloudCannon uses your webpage previews for on-page editing in the Visual Editor, allowing you to make editing decisions in context with your live webpage.
Webpage previews are also used as screenshots for each File Card in the Collection Browser to help you visually identify your files in-app.
You must build your Site on CloudCannon to generate webpage previews.
What is an output file?#
When you build your Site, CloudCannon will run the build command appropriate for your Static Site Generator (SSG). Your SSG will output each of your website files to a unique URL, allowing visitors to access your webpages on the Internet.
Each output URL is made of a subpath (optional) and a slug. The domain section of each URL will be the name of your Testing Domain, or Custom Domain if you have one configured.
Once your SSG has built your Site, CloudCannon will generate a webpage preview for each Collection item, and automatically match webpage previews with each file by determining the likely output URL for each file.
If CloudCannon did not determine the correct output URL for your Collection, you will not be able to edit your files using the Visual Editor or see screenshots in your Collection Browser. You can fix this issue by updating the output URL CloudCannon uses to match a webpage preview to a file.
If you don't want CloudCannon to generate webpage previews for a Collection, or if CloudCannon has incorrectly determined an output URL for a non-output Collection, you can disable webpage previews for a Collection.