Drafts and published
The difference between what you are working on and what the public sees — for the whole site, and for a single item in a list.
Two versions of your site exist at all times: the one you are working on, and the one the public sees. Nothing moves from the first to the second until you publish.
That is the safety net under everything else here. It is why you can try a wild idea on a Tuesday afternoon without any customer ever knowing.
The whole site
Your project shows you which state it is in:
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Not published | Nobody outside your project can see the site yet. |
| Live | The public site matches what you have been working on. |
| Unpublished changes | You have changed things since the last time you published. The public still sees the older version. |
| Publishing… | It is going out now. Takes a minute or two. |
| Publish failed | The attempt did not work. Your live site is untouched — the last good version is still up. |
"Unpublished changes" is the one to watch for. It is not a warning — it is a reminder that the work you did this morning is still sitting with you. Press Publish when you are happy with it.
A single item in a list
Items in your lists — a dish, a service, a project, an article — have their own draft or published state, separate from the site as a whole.
- Draft — you are still working on it. Write half of it, leave it, come back tomorrow.
- Published — it is finished, as far as you are concerned.
In the list you can filter by All, Published or Draft, and inside an item the button switches it: Publish, or Move to draft to pull it back.
The rule that ties them together
An item marked draft never appears on your live site, even after you publish the site.
But it does appear in your own preview. That is on purpose: you want to see how tomorrow's article looks in place before you commit to it. So if you see something in your preview that is missing from the live site, check whether that item is still a draft — that is nearly always the answer.
To get a finished item in front of the public, both things have to be true: the item is published, and the site has been published since.
Why not publish automatically?
Because half-finished is the normal state of a website. A price you are still checking, a photo you have not cropped, an announcement dated for next week — none of those should reach a customer the moment you type them.
There is no cost to publishing and no limit on it, so publish as often as you like. See Putting your site online.