How to publish changes to your site
Publishing any changes to your website is a 3-step process.
Save your changes
Once you've made changes to a page (or your site structure or menus) you must save these changes.
To save changes in direct edit
Click the "save content" button at the bottom of the content type you're working in OR in the top-right corner of the block as shown here:
To save changes in standard interface
Locate and click on the "save changes" button at the bottom of the content type editor screen.
Approve changes to a page
When you save changes to a page, those changes will not show up on your website until a site moderator approves the changes. If you are a site moderator, you must still approve your own changes. Only a moderator can approve saved changes to a page and then publish those changes.
If you are a contributor, you will have to email or call a site moderator and ask them to approve and publish your updates for you. Until you do so, they will not appear on the website.
Pages with pending content updates are visible in site structure: you will see an orange circle across from the page showing the number of items on that page that are pending approval:
And if you click on this page, and click the content tab, any content type(s) awaiting approval will be have a status of pending/orange as well:
How to see all pending updates to a website
If you are a moderator, you can see all pending changes on your site by clicking "Approve Content" in your T4 dashboard:
- Click the dropdown arrow by "content" in your T4 dashboard
- Choose the "Approve Content" option
Approving changes as a moderator
If you are a moderator, there are 3 ways to approve changes that you or a contributor has made to your site:
After you or a contributor has made updates to a content type on a page, you can scroll to the bottom of the content type that needs to be approved to locate the "save changes" button. If you are a moderator, you will see a dropdown arrow across from save changes. Click it, and choose the option "Save and approve."
As a moderator, you can see all pending changes to pages on your site in the "Content>Approve" section of the T4 dashboard.
To access this:
- Click the dropdown arrow by "content" in your T4 dashboard
- Choose the "Approve Content" option
You will be taken to a screen that lists all content updates that are pending approval by a site moderator.
Tip: you can use the "filter" field to enter the name of the person who made changes to your site, or the name of the site that has pending changes.
To approve one of these changes, click the empty square across from the update and then click the blue "approve" button.
To approve ALL pending updates, click the empty "select all" square circled below, and then click the blue "approve" button. The "select all" square is in the grey area, at the very top of all the checkboxes.
This will trigger the pop up window shown below.
Click approve again to approve the changes.
You have now approved any pending changes. See also: How to preview proposed changes to a page.
Publish changes made to your site
Saving changes to a page will hold these changes for approval by a moderator; Approving changes allows the changes to be published to your site. That leaves the final step: publishing your changes.
The final step to have a change appear on your website is to publish the section where the change was made. Within 10 minutes, the change will show up on your site.
To publish saved and approved changes to a site:
- Locate the page you have updated, and click the actions box across from it.
- Click "publish section."
Note: Moderator-only actions do not need approval before publishing
While content edits to a page must be "approved" by a moderator, contributors cannot do things like create a new page or edit a menu, therefore these types of actions do not need to be approved before they're published — they're moderator only actions, and moderator only actions do not need to be approved because only moderators can do these things. This is why you will not see an approve option for actions like creating a new page or editing a menu. All actions with the exception of content edits on pages need only be saved and then published.
Shortcut:
If you have made changes to multiple pages, publish a branch
If you have made changes to multiple pages on your site, you can avail of the "publish branch" option. By clicking "publish branch" T4 will update changes made to a page and all of its child pages as well.
In the example below, "Our People" is a branch that includes the "Our People" page as well as its child pages. Child pages of a branch are clearly indented below it. Think of "branches" as "sections." The "Our People" branch contains the pages: Contact Us, Faculty, Sessionals, Staff and Graduate Students.
To publish a branch:
- Click the actions button across from the branch root page
- Click publish branch
Note: If you have edited many pages in different branches, click "publish branch" across from your home page and this will publish all pending updates on your site. Just be sure that no one purposefully had content left in pending status, or that no one is currently updating a page when you do this shortcut. There is generally no need to publish the home page branch. If you've updated your home page, click "publish section" not "publish branch" to avoid publishing your entire site.