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Edit a Live Oxygen Builder Site Safely with Sandbox (Free)

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Editing a live Oxygen Builder site is risky. Visitors see every half-finished change, and on a busy online shop you can't copy the site to staging because new orders keep coming in. Sandbox for Oxygen Builder keeps your Oxygen edits in an isolated session. You send the client a private preview link and publish only after they approve. You don't need a second install and you don't have to sync the site back afterwards.

Sandbox is a free plugin, made by DPlugins together with OxyRealm (the team behind Asura, the license manager for Oxygen design sets).

What Sandbox for Oxygen Builder solves

The usual way to change a production site safely is to build a staging copy, make the changes there and push them back. On an e-commerce site that has a catch: orders, customers and content keep changing on the live site while you work. Pushing the copy back can overwrite them.

Sandbox lets you work on the live site itself. Your Oxygen edits are saved on their own and stay out of what visitors see. It's useful when:

  • You run an online shop and have to work on the live site while sales come in.
  • You want to show a client changes on their own live site without keeping a second copy, and nobody else should see them before they're approved.

In the video we test on Oxygen 3.7.1 (the latest stable version when we recorded it) with Swiss Knife installed. The site uses a pre-made Oxygen design set.

Installation and setup

Sandbox is a normal WordPress plugin zip, so you install it the usual way. Watch the PHP version: the plugin won't install on older PHP.

  1. Download Sandbox for Oxygen Builder from dplugins.com. Use the Free Download button.
  2. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip and click Install Now.
  3. On a server running PHP older than 7.4, the install fails with "The package could not be installed. The PHP version on your server is … requires 7.4." Our test site ran PHP 7.3.5. We changed the site's PHP version in our local environment and ran the upload again.
  4. Click Activate Plugin.

Activating Sandbox also installs and activates a second plugin, Aether, with the description "The framework for Oxyrealm's plugins." OxyRealm plans more plugins that use this shared framework. Keeping it in a separate plugin means it isn't copied into every one of them, so each plugin stays smaller. After activation your plugin list shows both Aether and dPlugins Sandbox, the latter described as "Isolated environment for Oxygen Builder plugin."

A sandbox session starts as soon as you activate the plugin. At the top of the Plugins screen you'll see this notice:

Sandbox Mode is Active
Any change you made to Oxygen Builder's settings, post, page, and template will isolated until you published it.

Below the notice is a Preview link field with Publish and Delete buttons. The admin bar also shows a Sandbox item with a green dot, so you always know you're working in a sandbox.

Workflow: edit, preview, publish

This is the part that protects your visitors. You work in Oxygen as usual, and only you (plus anyone you give the link to) see the result.

  1. Open the page in Oxygen and edit it. In the video we changed the hero background to blue, turned the heading green and set the Background Color of the "Start Investing" button to #ff0000 under Advanced → Background.
  2. Click Save in Oxygen and close the builder.
  3. Open the site in an incognito window. Visitors without the sandbox link see the page unchanged: the original white hero and teal button.
  4. Copy the Preview link from the Sandbox notice. It's the site URL with an aether_m_sandbox query parameter that identifies your session. Anyone who opens it sees the sandboxed version with all your changes.
  5. Send the link to your client. They review the changes on their own site, in an isolated view, and either approve them or ask for more changes.
  6. After approval, go back to Plugins and click Publish in the Sandbox notice. Your changes go live and every visitor sees them.

To throw away a session, use Delete in the same notice.

Once you publish, the Sandbox plugin deactivates itself. The plugin list shows dPlugins Sandbox with an Activate link again. For your next round of changes, activate it again and a new sandbox session starts.

Who is this for

  • Oxygen Builder shop owners who need to change design while orders keep coming in, without a staging copy to sync back.
  • Agencies and freelancers who want client approval on the live site before anything goes public.
  • Anyone maintaining a production Oxygen site who doesn't want visitors to see work in progress.

FAQ

Do visitors see my changes while Sandbox is active?
No. In the video, the page in an incognito window stays unchanged after we save in Oxygen. Only people who open the sandbox preview link see the edits.

What does Sandbox isolate?
The plugin's notice says changes to Oxygen Builder's settings, posts, pages and templates stay isolated until you publish.

Why does Sandbox install a plugin called Aether?
Aether is OxyRealm's shared framework. Sandbox installs it automatically so the framework isn't bundled into every OxyRealm plugin, which keeps each plugin smaller.

What PHP version does Sandbox need?
PHP 7.4 or newer. On PHP 7.3.5 the upload failed with a PHP version error.

What happens after I publish?
Your changes go live and Sandbox deactivates itself. To start a new sandbox session, activate the plugin again.

Get Sandbox for Oxygen Builder (free) → dplugins.com

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