CMS Guide

What to Publish, When to Publish

Publishing is the act of sending all or part of your site to the web. You can publish a page, folder, file, or your entire site.

At Brandeis, we have two publishing destinations: www.brandeis.edu and webtest.brandeis.edu. Anytime you make changes to your site, first publish to webtest — think of it as a draft server. You can check you work, share with colleagues and make changes in the CMS prior to your page(s) going to the live website. Once you review your site on webtest, you can publish to the live site, www.brandeis.edu.

Note: When making changes to the navigation (e.g., whether a page appears in the navigation, or the text that displays), you will almost always need to republish the whole site. This will refresh the left navigation of your site, which is important for the "hamburger" navigation for mobile visitors.

When do I republish?

After you edit content on a page

  • Publish the page.

After you edit Folder Name that appears in the navigation

After you change "Include in Left Navigation" option

After you move or rename

  • If you move or rename a page that was in a folder to a new folder, publish your whole site.
  • If you move or rename a page that was in the left navigation to a new folder, publish your whole site.
  • If you move or rename an image or document, publish all Relationships for that file to avoid broken links.

After you delete

  • If you delete a page that was in the left navigation (any level), publish the whole site.
  • If you delete a page that is linked on another page, edit the latter page to remove the linked text and publish that page. 
  • If you delete a PDF that is linked on a page, edit the page to remove the linked text and publish that page.
  • If you delete an image from a page, edit the page to remove the image and publish that page. (If the image is not being used elsewhere on your site, keep your site tidy by deleting the unused image file.)

Best Practice: Before publishing live, you should first publish to the test server. This gives you an opportunity to review the pages privately before they become available to the public.