Publish your changes

Everything you change in the editor is saved as you go, but visitors don't see it until you publish. You can edit over several days, close the window and come back. Your changes wait for you.

Publish

1. Click Publish at the top right. A window lists Your changes, each marked New, Edited or Deleted, like "Home page" or "Events list".
2. Look over the Site check below the list (more on it next).
3. Click Publish now.
4. Keep the window open while it works. You'll see each step: Checking your changes, Translating new text into Spanish (if your site is also in Spanish), Saving your changes and Building your site. This usually takes a minute or two.
5. When it says Your changes are live, click View your site to see them, or Keep editing. The editor reloads with your published site.

If you close the window by accident, publishing carries on. Open the editor again and it shows you how far along it is.

In the demo and in a free preview's practice editor, publishing is turned off. The window shows what publishing would do and the same site check.

The site check

Before anything goes live, every page is checked for things that would embarrass you or confuse visitors. Each problem says where it is, like a page and section, a list or Business info.

• Fix before publishing (red): problems that stop a publish, like placeholder text that's still there, a button with no link, or a link to a page that doesn't exist. Click Fix next to one to jump straight to it.
• Worth a look (gray): things to consider, like a social link that goes to Facebook's main page instead of yours. These don't stop you from publishing.
• Easy for everyone to use (gray): things that make your site harder to use for people with screen readers or who use a keyboard instead of a mouse. See Make your site easy for everyone to use. These don't stop you from publishing either.

When nothing is found, it says Site check passed. If there's something in red, the top bar shows a button like 2 to fix, which opens the same window.

Publish now stays grayed out until everything in red is fixed, and while there's nothing new to publish.

Hide a section to publish without it

A section you don't want to deal with yet can be hidden instead, and the check skips it:

1. Open the page in Pages.
2. On the section's card, click the eye button (Hide section). The card says Hidden from visitors.
3. Publish as usual. To bring it back later, click the eye button again (Show section).

What the check looks at

• Pages: placeholder text, buttons with no link or a link to a missing page, forms and signups that aren't connected, video and audio sections without a link, and sections with nothing to show, like an FAQ section with no answered questions or an Hours section with no hours.
• Lists: items still holding their placeholder text, events with no date, products without a plain price like 24.00, and job openings past their closing date.
• Menu: links with no address or to a missing page, and no privacy policy in your footer links when your forms collect names and emails.
• Business info: a missing business name, no phone or email, no address or service area, social links that aren't your own page, and an announcement that's out of date.
• Store and Bookings: settings that would stop a checkout or a booking, like no pickup or shipping, or Stripe not connected.
• Languages: text that isn't in Spanish yet (it's translated when you publish).
• AI changes: examples still marked "Replace me".
• Easy for everyone to use: photos with no description, buttons that only say "Click here" or "Read more", lines that look like subheadings but aren't, a menu that's only a PDF, and form questions with no wording.

Make your site easy for everyone to use

Some visitors use a screen reader, which reads the page out loud, or move around with a keyboard instead of a mouse. Your site's design already works for them: headings, menus, forms and buttons are built the right way, colors are checked for contrast, and every page is tested with accessibility checking software when we update the template. The check before publishing looks at what you write and add:

• A photo has no description: open the photo and fill in Description, like "Stone patio with a fire pit at dusk". Leave it empty only for photos that are just decoration.
• A button says only "Click here": screen readers can list every link on a page, and "Click here" five times doesn't say where each goes. Name the place, like See the café menu or Book a tour.
• A line in bold on its own: it looks like a subheading but a screen reader reads it as a sentence. Start the line with ## (two # and a space) to make it a real subheading.
• A line starts with # or ###: only ## makes a subheading; other # marks show as typed.
• Your menu is only a PDF: PDFs are hard to read on phones and with screen readers. Add a Price list / menu section too: Fill in from a photo or PDF copies the PDF in for you. See Fill in a menu or price list from a photo or PDF.
• A question in this form has no wording: type the question, or remove it.

Videos from YouTube and Vimeo play with their own captions. Turn them on, or check the automatic ones, in YouTube Studio or Vimeo.

Your site comes with an Accessibility statement page template (Pages › New page) that says how your business welcomes people with disabilities. The checks help, but they can't promise a site meets every rule, so the statement says how to reach you if something is hard to use.

Your forms are connected for you

The Form sections on your site send messages to your inbox and your email automatically. You don't have to set anything up. See Forms and your inbox.

If publishing stops

You'll see a message in the publish window, and your changes stay saved in the editor.

• "Please fix this problem first": something on the site check needs fixing. Fix it and click Publish now again.
• "A photo on your site couldn't be found": choose that photo again, then publish.
• "While you were editing, … was also changed for you": we changed the same part of your site while you were editing, for example while doing a work request. Copy your newest edits somewhere safe, click Discard changes, then make them again. Or send us a support request and we'll sort it out.
• "Publishing didn't finish": something went wrong on our side. We're told automatically. Try again in a few minutes.

"Your site was updated"

If you see this, your site was published from another window (or by someone else on your account) after you opened the editor. Click Reload to get the latest version before you keep editing, so nothing is overwritten.

Spanish pages

If your site is also shown in Spanish, new and changed text is translated when you publish. Text you translated or rewrote yourself is never replaced. Until something is translated, your Spanish pages show it in English.