Reviewing changes before they go live

Normally every save is on the public page at once. Turn on Review changes before they go live and visitors keep seeing the last published version while you edit, until somebody presses Publish changes.

Turning it on

WhereDashboard, Brand manual, Settings, Visibility

1. Open the manual and go to the Settings tab.
2. In Visibility, check Review changes before they go live.
3. Save the settings.

Nothing on the public page moves when you turn it on. The manual as it stands at that moment becomes the published version, so visitors keep reading what they were already reading.

Checking or unchecking the box is part of saving the manual settings, so it needs Edit sections and content, not the right to publish.

What you see while editing

Writing does not change. Sections save as before (The editor). A banner above the Content and Settings tabs says how far the editor has run ahead of the public page.

Everybody who can open the manual sees the banner. If you may not publish, you see the count and no button.

Reading the changes before you approve them

Discuss it in the comment threads, which are not public. See Comments.

What counts as a change

A section that was added, removed, renamed, moved relative to the others, or edited in any field counts as one change.

• Hiding a section from the public page, or showing a hidden one again, counts as a change.
• Moving one section to the top does not mark the rest as moved.
• A rename counts as one change, not as a removal plus an addition.

Publishing, and who may do it

Press Publish changes on the banner. A version is written and the public page shows it. Visitors have the edits from the next page load, and the history records who published and when.

A role you build yourself may publish if it holds Publish and unpublish. See Roles and Custom roles.

There is no approval per section: publishing takes the whole manual as it stands. If one section is not ready, hide it.

What waits, and what is live anyway

Everything public shows the same published version: the brand hub, the print view and the PDF (PDF export), and the read only API, so a request for {slug}.json gets the published sections (Manuals in the API (opens in a new tab)). Analytics counts a section view only for sections visitors are shown, so a section that exists only in the editor records nothing until you publish (Analytics).

Unpublishing, and publishing again

Unpublish takes the whole manual off the internet. Nothing is lost, and the banner is not shown while the manual is a draft. See Publishing and unpublishing.

Turning it off with changes pending

Uncheck Review changes before they go live and save, and everything that was waiting is published at once, in the state the editor holds, without anybody pressing Publish changes.

• Nothing is deleted. The versions written along the way stay in the history and can still be restored.
• The banner disappears.
• Turning it back on later takes a new version from the editor as it is then, not the one you had before.

A manual the plan no longer covers

After a downgrade that leaves a manual outside the plan, the manual is read only. Publish changes is refused, and the public page keeps showing the version it already has. A freeze never takes a page off the internet. See What a downgrade freezes.

In the history

Versions are kept for 370 days, and the plan decides how far back the history page may look. The version a public page is showing is never removed, however old it is.

Restoring an old version puts its content back into the editor, where it waits like any other edit, so you can check a restore before visitors see it. See History and versions.

Several brands at once

The Agency (opens in a new tab) page adds up what is waiting across all your brands. A tile counts Waiting to publish, and each brand's row is tagged N changes to publish or no published version. See Brands and manuals.

When to turn it on

Related: Who may see a manual and section owners and review dates, which are separate and change nothing about what visitors see.