Preview, stage and revert a change

Every change is drafted and staged before it is live, and it is revertible. This is the safety net under everything else in this section.

Staged, then live#

Two states, and only one of them is public.

• Staged - drafted, visible to you, invisible to everyone else.
• Live - published, and what a visitor gets.
• Nothing crosses that line without you. There is no auto-publish.

You are looking at the real site#

This is the difference from a mockup tool.

• The preview is your actual site, running your actual pages.
• What you approve is what a visitor gets, with no translation step in between.
• A layout that works in the preview works live, because they are the same thing.

Going back#

A published change is not a one-way door.

• Every change is revertible.
• Reverting is itself a change, so it stages the same way before it goes live.
• Your old pages are not deleted the moment a new one publishes.

What to check before you publish#

Four things, in about a minute.

1. Read the changed text out loud. Wrong facts hide better than wrong grammar.
2. Look at the page on a phone width, not only on your monitor.
3. Click the buttons you changed, including the ones in the footer.
4. Check the pages either side of it, in case a shared section moved.

If something is wrong after it is live#

Two routes, and both are quick.

• Revert it from the portal and the previous version comes back.
• Email [email protected] if a site we host is broken and you cannot get it back yourself. A person answers.