Publishing your website
Your website starts as a private draft so you can build it without anyone seeing it. When you are ready, you publish it to make it live on its public routes. This page shows you how to publish, unpublish, and what visitors see at each stage.
Draft vs. live
Every website is in one of two states:
- Draft — The website is hidden. You can keep building, editing pages, and previewing your work, but the public site does not resolve for visitors.
- Published — The website is live and resolves on its public routes for anyone who visits.
You can see the current state at a glance:
- In your website list (
/dashboard/websites), each website shows a Published or Draft badge. - On the website settings page, the same badge appears next to the Website settings heading.
Publishing your website
- Open the website you want to publish from
/dashboard/websites. - Go to Website settings for that site (
/dashboard/websites/{your-website}/settings). - Stay on the General section, under Identity and publishing.
- Find the Public website card and click Publish.
- Confirm in the dialog. It explains that the public website will start resolving on its live routes.
- Click Save settings in the top-right corner to apply the change.
The badge switches to Published, and your site is now live for visitors.
Note: Clicking Publish in the dialog stages the change. It is not saved until you click Save settings.
Unpublishing your website
If you need to take the site offline, you can unpublish it at any time.
- Open Website settings for the website.
- In the Public website card, click Unpublish.
- Confirm in the dialog. It explains that the public website will stop resolving on its live routes.
- Click Save settings to apply.
The badge returns to Draft, and the public site stops resolving. Your content, pages, and settings are all kept intact, so you can publish again later without losing anything.
What visitors see
- Published site: Visitors reach your live pages normally.
- Draft (unpublished) site: The public website does not resolve on its live routes, so visitors cannot browse it.
Legal pages (such as your privacy policy and terms) stay reachable even while the site is unpublished, so checkout and registration consent links keep working. While the site is a draft, those pages show a draft banner and are hidden from search engines.
Maintenance mode
If you want to keep the website published but temporarily show a holding message instead, use Maintenance mode instead of unpublishing.
- Open Website settings and find the Maintenance mode card on the General section.
- Turn the Maintenance mode switch on.
- Click Save settings.
While maintenance mode is on, the site returns a maintenance response and shows your maintenance message, but the rest of your website configuration stays intact. Turn the switch off and save again to return to normal.
Before you publish
A few things worth checking first: