Publishing, drafts and history

Start herePagesPublishing, drafts and historyEditing a page and putting it live are two separate steps. This page covers what visitors see while you work, publishing now or later, sharing a draft for review, taking a page down, and going back to an earlier version.Draft, published, and unpublished changesEvery page keeps two copies: the live one visitors see, and your working copy, which the editor saves as you go. The label in the editor's top bar tells you how they stand:

Draft: the page has never been published, or has been taken down. Visitors who try its address get a "not found" page.

Unpublished changes: the page is live, but you've changed it since. Visitors still see the last published version.

No label, and the button says Published: what you see is exactly what's live.

Publishing a pagePress Publish (or Publish changes) at the top right of the editor. The top bar says Published · live now, and View opens the live page in a new tab.If the page is already live, a change to its title, address or parent page waits for this moment too. Until you publish, the old title and address stay live.If a reusable block on the page also has unpublished changes, Cairn asks whether to publish those along with the page. Tick Also publish "…" for each one you want to go live. See Reusable blocks.The arrow beside the Publish button opens more options. One of them, Auto-publish on save, makes every change go live as soon as it saves, with no Publish step. It suits a page you're fixing quickly. For anything else, leave it off so visitors never see work in progress.The Publish menu. The options change with the page's state.Checking before you publishPress Preview in the top bar (or Preview draft ↗ / Preview your changes ↗ in the Publish menu) to open your working copy in a new tab, exactly as it will look. Only you and other people signed in to the admin can open it.To show a draft to someone who doesn't have an admin account, use Share draft link… in the Publish menu. Press Copy and send them the link. Anyone with it can view the current draft without signing in, and search engines won't list it.Press Reset link in the same window to stop an old link working. Every link you've shared for that page stops at once, and you get a new one.Publishing laterA draft page can publish itself at a time you choose.

Open the Publish menu and choose Schedule publish….

Pick the date and time in Publish at. It must be in the future.

Press Schedule.

The page stays a draft until then, and shows Scheduled in the Pages list. You can keep editing it: whatever is in the working copy at that time is what goes live. To change the time or call it off, choose Reschedule / cancel… and press Cancel schedule. Publishing by hand, or unpublishing, also clears the schedule.Scheduling is only offered for pages that aren't live yet. To time changes to a page that's already published, make them at the time you want them live and press Publish changes.Taking a page down, or throwing changes awayUnpublish in the Publish menu takes a live page off the site. It goes back to being a draft, its address shows visitors a "not found" page, and it drops out of the menu. Nothing is deleted: publish it again whenever you like.Discard changes… (only shown when there are unpublished changes) throws away everything you've done since the last publish and puts the page back to its live version. Press Discard to confirm, or Keep editing.Copy public link copies the live page's address, ready to paste into an email.To remove a page from the site completely, move it to the Trash. See Pages and addresses.Version history and going backEvery time you publish, Cairn keeps a snapshot. Once a page has been published at least once, choose Version history in the Publish menu to see them, newest first. The top one, marked Live, is the version you published most recently. Each entry shows when it was published and by whom.

Press Preview on an older version to see it in a new tab.

Press Restore on the one you want, then Restore to draft.

That version is loaded into your working copy. Nothing changes on the live site yet.

Look it over, then press Publish changes to put it live.

Restoring brings back the page's blocks. Its title, address and search settings stay as they are now. The list shows the last 50 versions.Version history.When someone else is editingOn sites where live updates are switched on, a strip under the top bar tells you when someone else has the same page open, for example "Sam also has this page open."If they save a change while you're working, a yellow strip says so, and your own saving pauses so that neither of you overwrites the other without knowing. Choose Load their version to reload the page with their changes, or Keep mine to save your version over theirs.On sites without live updates there is no warning: the last person to save wins. If two of you need to work on one page, take turns.← The page editorSearch engines and sharing →Getting startedPagesBuilding with blocksNavigation and lookMediaForms and leadsCatalogueShopBookings and membersRunning the siteCairnWebsites for businesses that need more than a brochure. Built, hosted and kept running by us.StartBuildRun© 2026 Cairn. All rights reserved.Built with Cairn.