Publishing your site
How publishing works in Iterant: preview versus live, what a publish does, and when to republish.
Publishing rebuilds your whole site from its current source and deploys it as one atomic unit. A single publish also carries pending changes on other pages, and republishing is cheap and safe whenever you're unsure.
The three states of a page
You'll see these as badges across the dashboard:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | This page has never been published. |
| Published | This page is live and up to date. |
| Changed | This page has unpublished changes. |
Other states appear while the agent works: Generating, Polishing, Pending Review, and Failed Generation. A page can also be Archived. You cannot publish a page while it is polishing or waiting for your review. Let the polish loop settle, or approve the draft first.
Only published pages ship. The build includes routes for pages that are Published or Changed. Drafts have no route and return 404 on the live site.
Two kinds of preview
The editing preview is the pane next to Terra in chat, and the canvas in the editor. It renders your work in progress as you and the agent change it. You cannot share it, and Iterant does not measure it.
A preview link is a real deployment of your current work to a separate, private address. Use it to show someone a draft without touching your live site. Create one from the Publish popover in the chat preview pane: Create preview link, or Refresh preview link once one exists.
A preview deploy differs from a real publish:
| Publish | Preview link | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it goes | Your live site | A separate private address |
| What's included | Published pages only | Every page, drafts included |
| Search engines | Indexed normally | Excluded, served noindex |
| Page statuses | Updated | Untouched |
| Search-engine notification | Sitemap and instant-index pings sent | None |
| Form submissions | Real leads, with notifications | Stored, badged Test, no notifications |
Forms work on a preview link, so you can prove a form submits end to end before the page is public.
Publishing
Publish from the Publish control above the chat preview pane, or from the Publish button in the editor's canvas toolbar. The chat control shows a dot when there are unpublished changes.
The label tells you what will happen: Publish for a page that's never been live, Publish changes for a page with edits pending, Republish for a page that's already live and up to date, and Retry publish after a failure.
The popover shows the current state before you commit: Live with the time of the last update, Unpublished changes, Not published, or Not live yet. It also lists the changes since your last publish, and the live URL once there is one.
Confirming updates your live site, and pending changes on other published pages go live in the same update. The editor's confirmation adds a change summary of sections added, removed, modified, or reordered, so you can see what differs before you agree.
What happens on publish
- Iterant marks the page published and records the change in its history.
- Iterant queues a build, checks out your site's source, prunes drafts, and compiles the whole site.
- The result deploys and starts serving.
- Iterant submits your sitemap to Search Console and pings search engines for instant indexing.
- Iterant probes your live site to confirm the pages resolve on your domain and that measurement is reporting.
Publishing usually completes in a couple of minutes. While it runs:
- The status reads Publishing…, and finishes with a Your site is live toast.
- You cannot edit: "Publishing is in progress. Editing is paused."
- Iterant refuses a second publish rather than queueing it: "Another update is going live right now, one moment."
Republishing
Republishing is always available on a live site, even when nothing looks different. A publish rebuilds from source, so it is how these changes reach visitors:
- Tracking settings and tag IDs.
- Brand-level metadata, social preview images, and SEO defaults.
- Domain and routing changes.
- Anything Terra changed in the site's shared chrome rather than in one page.
Deploys are idempotent, so republishing a site that is already current produces the same result.
Terra can also republish on request. It asks for your approval first, then reports "Republish queued. The production build normally finishes within a couple of minutes."
Unpublishing a page
In the editor's publish popover, Unpublish removes a single page from the live site: "This URL will stop being served after the next deploy." Other published pages stay live, and you can republish the page at any time.
Publishing settings
Settings → Publishing holds three brand-level defaults: "Language, timezone, and default publish time for this brand."
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Timezone | Used at scheduling and display time. Defaults to UTC. |
| Default publish time | Pre-fills the time when scheduling a page. |
| Default language | Pages for this brand are written in this language. |
These are defaults only. You publish from chat or from the editor.
Troubleshooting
Next
Connecting a domain: serve your published pages from your own URL.
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