Understanding a Web Document's Status

When you first create a web document it is created in a draft state. This version can be viewed and edited within the management console Site Manager.

In order for a document to be visible on a website it must be published. Publishing a document does two things:

• The state of the Draft version is changed to Published (read only) and it is made live on the website (replacing the previously live version).
• The new Live version and associated images/attachments are copied to a new Draft version for future changes.

Each time an update is published any previous live version of the document is replaced, but a copy is stored in the document's history with a status of published.

There are three unique operations that you can take to change a document's status.

• Publish takes the current draft version of a web document and moves it to the live version. If there is an existing live version, this becomes a previous version and is added to the history with a status of published.
• Restore discards any changes that have been made to the draft version of a web document since it was last published and replaces it with the contents of a selected previously published version.
• Rollback takes the specified previous version of a web document and moves it to the live version. The existing live version becomes a previous version and is added to the history.

Only the draft version of a web document can be modified.