Toggle Between Public & Edit Views

You’ll notice that there’s a big difference between the edit views and the public views of Lumen course materials. You’ll want to frequently move from one to the other, to see how changes you make in the edit view appear publicly to your students.

NOTE: the visual appearance of content in the edit view can be quite different from the public display of the same page. Fonts, spacing, and tables, in particular, can look different on edit views.

It’s not worth investing a lot of time into getting things to look great in the edit screen, if they don’t actually translate well into the public view, after all.

 

Accessing Edit Tools

From the Course Dashboard

Click on the title of the page you’d like to edit. When you hover your mouse over the title, the font turns from black to blue.

Dashboard screenshot. One page title is in blue font, with a red oval around it

Clicking the page title takes you to the edit view for that page.

Screenshot of edit window with editing toolbar and textboxes
Screenshot of Publish options

Obviously, you have lots of options and tools on this edit view…which are covered in more detail in this user guide. For now, note the right side of the screen, which is where you’ll save all the changes you make on this page.

In the “Publish” box, you’ll need to hit the blue “Update” button to save any changes you make. Additionally, you can use the gray “Preview Changes” button to see what the public view looks like. It’s good practice to check this “Preview Changes” view frequently, both before you save and after. The “Preview Changes” button will open a new window in your web browser, so you can see both edit and public views of the page at the same time.

Editing From the Public View of the Webpage

Once you’ve logged into your Lumen course, you will have access to an “edit this page” option at the bottom of each page of your text.

Most viewers see this at the bottom of a Lumen webpage Logged in users see this at the bottom of the same page
Paragraph of text, "previous" and "next" buttons Paragraph of text, green "edit this page" button, "previous" and "next" buttons

 

Accessing Public Views

After you’ve made edits and updated, the top of the page will update with a notification message. You can use this notification as a way to return to the public view, as well.

Screen shot showing "view page" and "view chapter" link options circled in red

The “View Page” link is always available in the blue tool bar at the top of the edit view. The “View Chapter” link in the white bar appears only after you’ve updated the page. Each takes you to the same public view of the page.