🚀 Drafts and Publishing
Publishing makes a story visible to readers, and until then it is a draft that only the Studio can see. This page will guide you through the story statuses, the rule that every published story needs a topic, publishing a story and taking one offline again.
- A story must belong to a topic before it can be published or scheduled.
- Saving a published story is not instant: changes reach the site at the next rebuild, 5 minutes after the last change by default.
- Drafts and planned stories never change the public site.
Story statuses
The status labels you will meet are:
- "Planned": a title and teaser only. Readers see it as a "Coming soon" card. Choose "Draft" to start writing it. See Planned stories.
- "Draft": written, or being written, and never public. A draft never causes a site update.
- "Scheduled": set to go live on its own at a chosen time. See Scheduling.
- "Published": live on the site after the next update.
The "Stories" list filters by "All", "Drafts", "Scheduled" and "Published", each with a count.
The publish rule
A story must belong to a topic before it can be published or scheduled. A story outside any topic has no public page and is on no map. The Studio helps you keep to this:
- A story that is not in a topic shows a "Needs a topic" badge in the list, and a message in its settings panel.
- The "Stories" list has a "Needs a home" button for published or scheduled stories without a topic.
- To fix it, add the story to "What comes next" on a story that is in a topic, or unpublish it.
Publishing a story
- Open the story and find "Publishing" in the settings panel.
- Choose "Published" and press "Save". The story is saved as live.
- Wait for the site update. The note under the buttons says "Saved changes reach the public site at the next site update."
A story in a topic that is not yet published stays off the site until its topic is. Publishing the opening story puts the topic live. See Publishing a whole thread.
Unpublishing
Choose "Draft" again and save. The story goes offline at the next site update. If other stories link to it, the Studio warns you first, because their choices would break.
Deleting a story cannot be undone. If it is published, it goes offline at the next site update, and any choices that led to it are removed. Unpublish instead if you might want it back.
In this section
Best Practices
- Publish in one go: finish a batch of edits, then let the wait pass, so readers get one update.
- Check the live page after the update, especially for new topics.
- Run the pre-publish checklist before a new topic goes live.