Publish, unpublish and archive

Put a page live, update it, take it down, or retire it without deleting it.

A page can be a draft, live or archived. Drafts never show on your site until you publish.

Before you start: Publishing, unpublishing and archiving need Website content at Can publish or higher. For visitors to see published pages, a public role must give Published pages the level Readable by anyone. See Team & Permissions.

Publish a page

  1. Open the page.
  2. Click Publish. If you have unsaved edits, they are saved first.

The page is live. A toast says Published, and the badge changes to Live. You can also publish from the page menu in the Pages list (the toast there says Published, or Changes published for a live page).

Publishing takes a frozen copy of the page. Edits you make afterwards stay private until the next publish.

Update a live page

After you edit a live page, the badge shows Unpublished changes · Review.

  1. Click Review to open Changes since publishing. It compares The live page with Your draft.
  2. Choose one:
    • Publish changes puts your draft live.
    • Discard changes puts the draft back to exactly what is live, after a confirmation. Your unpublished edits are lost.
    • Close leaves things as they are.

You can also click Publish changes in the top bar, or choose Review changes from the page menu.

Unpublish

  1. Open the ⋯ menu in the editor and choose Unpublish. Or open the page menu in Pages and choose Unpublish, then confirm Unpublish.

The page disappears from your site until it is published again. It becomes a draft and keeps all its text. A toast says Unpublished. The editor unpublishes straight away, without asking you to confirm.

Archive and restore

Archiving retires a page. It leaves your site and drops out of the default list, but nothing is deleted.

  1. In Pages, open the page menu and choose Archive.
  2. Confirm Archive.

To see archived pages, use the Archived filter. It appears once at least one page is archived. To bring a page back, choose Restore from archive in the menu, or click Restore in the editor. It returns as a draft (toast: "Restored as a draft"). Publish it again when ready.

What must be true before publishing

If your site has required custom fields, every one must be filled in. Otherwise publishing is refused with "fill in required fields before publishing: …" and the field names. Fill them in the Page tab. See Custom fields.

What happens next

  • Each publish, unpublish and archive is recorded in the page's Version history.
  • Your site's sitemap and AI summary files update straight away.

Tips

  • Use See how search engines see it on a live page to check the plain version crawlers read.
  • To roll a live page back, restore an earlier version and then publish. See Version history.