Save, publish or unpublish a page

Saving a page 

The Save as or Change to dropdown enables you to choose whether to save this page to Draft, Publish queue or Archived

If this is the first time you’re saving a brand-new page, it will be added to the content list with whatever you entered in the title field as its title, and its url will be

/whatever-you-entered-in-the-title-field

unless you unticked the Generate automatic url alias box and entered a different one (see url path settings).

The current state line above the Change to drop down will tell you whether this page is already live (published) or not (draft).

Draft
  • saving a brand-new page to draft saves it in the content list as unpublished (= not live)

  • saving a draft page to draft saves your new version of it in the content list as unpublished (= not live)

  • saving a live page to draft saves a new draft version of it as unpublished (= not live) but doesn’t update the live version

Publish queue
  • saving a brand-new or a draft page to publish queue will publish it in about half an hour

  • saving a live page to publish queue will update it instantly with any changes you made

Archived
  • saving a live page to Archived will unpublish it instantly and revert to draft state

It’s important to note that the default setting for the Change to dropdown is Draft. If you want to update a live page you need to change it to Publish queue.

NB if saving, editing, resaving, re-editing the same page, use the save and edit commands in Drupal (save button at bottom of page and either edit in black column at top of page view or edit button on contents list). DON’T use your browser’s back button as this may create multiple copies of your page.

Publishing a page

To publish a page select publish queue from the change to dropdown at the bottom of the edit page. It takes about half an hour for the page to appear on the live site.

NB Don’t make changes in the half hour between saving to publish queue and the page going live – Drupal won’t let you save those changes. Wait till it’s live before editing.

Once a page is live, you can edit and save to publish queue and it will update within minutes (it only takes half an hour to publish a completely new page).

Unpublishing

To remove a page from the live site, go into edit mode and at the bottom select Archived from the change to dropdown then click Save. That removes it from the live site but keeps it in Drupal as a draft.

NB anyone following a link to that page on the live site will get an error message. If you’re not planning to republish this page anytime soon it’s advisable to redirect it (see redirects)

You can republish the page by selecting Publish queue in the change to dropdown then click Save. It can take up to half an hour to reappear live.

NB2 there’s also a delete button down there. That will delete the page entirely from Drupal and isn’t reversible so only use it if you’ll never need that page in draft or live.

Previewing a page

If you want to preview a page before saving it, use the preview button at the bottom of the page.

Using the view tab at the top without saving gives you a preview of the page as it was before you made any changes.

The simplest way to make sure you're viewing the latest version and have saved your changes is to save the page to draft. This will show you any changes you've just made and won't affect the live version of the page (the live page only changes when you save your draft to publish queue).

Deleting a page

Clicking delete will delete all records of your page. It won’t revert to draft. it will disappear off the content list entirely.