For years, content teams have scheduled updates and hoped for the best. They’ve set publish and expiration dates, made educated guesses about layout shifts, and waited until content went live to see if it looked right.
Not anymore.
Today, dotCMS launches Future Time Machine, an innovative feature that lets teams preview their pages exactly as they will appear on any future date, in the exact spot it will be rendered, in real-world context.
No more blind scheduling. Just full visibility and control over how content evolves.
The First Preview That Goes Beyond Content Scheduling
Content teams often run into surprise formatting issues because the same piece of content can be published in multiple locations, each with its own layout and styling. Something that looks perfect on a homepage banner might not work on a product page or a different section, device, or language. Until now, the only way to check was waiting until the content went live.
Future Time Machine removes the guesswork.
Check how content fits into different templates, containers, and layouts
Validate design, responsiveness, and readability before anything goes public
Ensure consistency across multiple placements without waiting for the publishing date
Ensure that images, text, and layouts work in every context before they go live
Unlike traditional content previews that simply show an isolated piece of content, Future Time Machine brings content into the “wild”—allowing teams to validate how it will look in real-world conditions, as real site visitors will experience it.
How It Works
Using Future Time Machine inside dotCMS is simple.
Make sure your content types support scheduling
Add a publish date and, if necessary, an expiration date to your content type
Ensure these fields are system indexed so Future Time Machine can read them
More detail information in our documentation.
Create a future published piece of content
Go to content search, find the new content type and add a new piece of content
Make sure that this new content have a publish date in the furniture
Navigate to your page
Open the Universal Visual Editor (UVE) and load the page you want to preview
By default the UVE loads in Edit which shows the “draft” version of the content if it exists. Some content might have the same draft and live version.
Add the recently created piece of content.
Travel to the future
On the new dropdown on the top left, select “Published”. This will show the page with only the content that is currently published (or live).
Click on the calendar dropdown in the toolbar
Select a future date—this will render the page exactly as it will appear on that date (changes will be visible if it has content to be published on the selected date or after)
Scheduled content updates, expired content removals, and layout changes will be reflected instantly
See content in real-world context
Preview banners, blog posts, products, and any content that is set to change
Validate how content looks inside different sections of the page—something that might work well on one page could break in another
Make adjustments before content goes live to ensure a seamless experience
Designed for Complex Content Strategies
Works with both traditional and headless pages
Renders scheduled updates in the Universal Visual Editor for full context
Supports content relationships, widgets, and multi-location publishing
Handles multi-site and multi-language setups with precision
See Your Content’s Future Today
Future Time Machine is now available to all dotCMS users with Universal Visual Editor access.
Try it now: Open any page in edit mode, select a future date, and preview your content exactly as it will appear—where it will appear.
Because seeing is knowing.