The admin and the website are two separate things. In the admin you edit content. The website is what your visitors see. Your changes reach the website in a controlled way — this page explains how that works, and why the website is fast and reliable.
Ready-made pages
The website does not build a page from scratch for every visitor. Instead, it keeps a ready-made copy of every page and serves that copy. The copies are distributed over a network of servers around the world, so visitors get them from a server close to them.
This is why the website is very fast — and why it easily handles many visitors at the same time.
What happens when you change something
When you change something that is live — publish a page, save a published page, save the header or footer, or change a collection — the website refreshes its copies automatically. The updated page is built once, and from then on visitors get the new copy.
You do not have to do anything for this. Save or publish, and the website takes care of the rest.
Unpublished pages and draft copies do not touch the website at all. They only go live when you publish or apply them — see Status & publishing and Draft workflow.
Built to stay up
Because visitors always get a ready-made copy, the website keeps working even when something behind the scenes has a short hiccup. It does not depend on every part of the system being available at every moment. In practice, the website is available around the clock.
If your change does not show up
- Reload the page in your browser — your browser may still show you an older version it kept from your last visit.
- Check that the page is actually live: changes to unpublished pages and drafts are not on the website until you publish or apply them.
- If you saw an error message when saving or publishing, the website may not have been updated. Simply save or publish again.