Publishing content
on your website

Your CMS is designed so that editing content fields won't break your site's design or code. You can safely update text, swap images, and add new entries. The only things that could cause issues are deleting entries that other pages link to (which creates broken links) or pasting raw HTML into a rich text field. When in doubt, use the draft or preview feature before publishing.

A draft saves your changes without showing them on the live site. You can keep working on a draft over multiple sessions. Publishing pushes your changes to the public site immediately. Use drafts whenever you want to review your work, get approval from a colleague, or make changes over time before they go live.

Look for a "Preview" or "Live Preview" button near the top of the editor. This shows your edits on the actual page layout, so you can see exactly how your content will appear to visitors before you publish.

Yes. Your CMS can keep a revision history for entries (when enabled for that section). You can open the revision list, compare versions, and restore any previous version. Think of it like version history in Google Docs.

This is almost always browser caching. Your browser stores a copy of the page to load it faster, so it may show you a stale version.

Most editors work on a desktop and never see the mobile version of what they publish. Since over half of web traffic comes from phones, this is worth checking every time.

Your CMS preview tool includes responsive views for mobile, tablet, and desktop, in both portrait and landscape orientations. Use these before publishing to see how your content, images, and layout will look on smaller screens.

You can also check the live page after publishing: pull out your phone and visit the URL, or use your browser's built-in device simulator:

Pay attention to how your text reads at narrow widths (long paragraphs feel even longer), whether images crop well, and whether any important details get pushed too far down the page.

Start with the simplest explanation: it's usually your browser showing a cached version of the page. Do a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac) and check again.

If it still looks wrong, think about what you changed last. Open the entry's revision history, compare your latest version with the previous one, and restore the earlier version if needed.

If nothing you changed seems related, or if the whole site looks off, get in touch — it may be something on our end and we'll sort it out.

Yes. Your CMS supports scheduled publishing. Instead of clicking Publish right away, set a future date and time — the entry will go live automatically when that moment arrives. This is useful for announcements, event pages, or any content you want to prepare ahead of time.

If your site has expiration dates set up, you can set an end date on an entry and it will be removed from the site automatically. This is ideal for time-sensitive content like job postings, registration deadlines, or limited-time promotions.

The entry isn't deleted — it stays in the CMS as a disabled entry, so you can re-enable or update it later if needed.

Web readers scan. If they see a dense block of text, most will leave rather than dig through it. A few habits fix this:

• Lead with the point. The first sentence of any section should state the takeaway, not build up to it.
• Keep paragraphs to 2-3 sentences. What looks normal in a Word document feels heavy on a screen.
• Use headings to create a table of contents. A visitor should be able to skim your headings alone and understand what the page covers.
• Use lists when presenting options or steps. Bullets are easier to scan than a run-on sentence listing four things.

Word processors embed invisible formatting (font sizes, colours, spacing) that gets carried into the CMS. This creates inconsistent styling on your pages.

No. Bold text and headings serve different purposes. Headings create structure. They tell visitors and search engines what each section is about, and they show up in accessibility tools and screen readers. Bold text emphasizes a word or phrase within a paragraph.

If you're introducing a new topic, use a heading. If you're highlighting a key term within existing text, use bold.

Also keep headings in order — don’t jump from an H1 to an H3 without an H2 in between. Screen readers use heading levels to let visitors skip between sections, and skipping levels breaks that navigation.

Use text that describes where the link goes. Screen readers often read links out of context (just the link text, not the surrounding sentence), so the link needs to make sense on its own.

Use the video or embed content block rather than pasting code into a rich text field. These blocks are set up to display responsively across screen sizes. Pasting raw embed code into a text field will usually break the layout on mobile.

You'll typically just need the URL (for YouTube, Vimeo, or Google Maps) — paste it into the block's URL field and the embed handles the rest.

Third person is standard for organizational websites. "Sarah manages the communications team" reads more professionally than "I manage the communications team," and it keeps bios consistent when multiple team members are displayed together.

Use everyday words. "About" instead of "approximately." "Help" instead of "assist." "Try" instead of "attempt." Avoid jargon and internal acronyms unless you define them. If a term is specific to your organization, take a sentence to explain it.

Your website adapts to different screen sizes. A wide banner on desktop gets cropped taller and narrower on a phone. If the important content is at the edges, it gets cut off.

Choose images where the subject is centred and there's breathing room around the edges. If your CMS has a focal point tool, set it on the most important part of the image so the crop stays anchored there.

• Clear subject, simple composition. Busy images with lots of small details lose impact at smaller sizes.
• No text burned into the image. It can't be translated, read by screen readers, or resized for mobile.
• High enough resolution. If the image looks slightly soft on your screen, it will look blurry on the site. Check the recommended dimensions in your CMS field description.
• Relevant to the content. A stock photo of people shaking hands doesn't add information. An actual photo from your event does.

A focal point tells the CMS which part of the image matters most. When the image is cropped for different screen sizes, the CMS keeps the focal point visible instead of defaulting to a centre crop.

For headshots, place it near the person's face. For landscapes, place it on the main subject. This takes two seconds and prevents the awkward crops where someone's head is cut off on mobile.

Alt text describes an image for people who can't see it (screen reader users, or when images fail to load). Describe what's in the image, not what the image "is."

For purely decorative images (background patterns, visual dividers), leave alt text empty.

Yes. Use descriptive, lowercase names with hyphens: team-sarah-chen.jpg, not IMG_4392.jpg. Good file names help you find images later in the media library and provide a small SEO benefit.

The meta description is the short paragraph that appears below your page title in Google search results. Think of it as a two-sentence pitch for the page. Keep it under 155 characters, and describe what the page is about in a way that makes someone want to click.

Your site is set up to auto-generate a title and description from each entry’s content, based on the fields that make the most sense for that section. Only use the override fields when the auto-generated version isn’t quite right, for example if the page title is long and you want a shorter version for search results, or if the auto-generated description doesn’t capture what the page is really about.

Social platforms pull the title, description, and image from your page's metadata. If the preview shows the wrong image or a missing description, use the SEO override fields in your CMS to set a custom social title, description, and image.

After updating, you may need to clear the platform’s cache. Facebook and LinkedIn both have tools that let you re-scrape a URL to refresh the preview.

Facebook: Sharing Debugger
LinkedIn: Post Inspector

If the preview still doesn’t look right after re-scraping, get in touch and we’ll take a look.

Search engines use headings to understand what a page is about. An H1 should state the page's main topic. H2s and H3s break it into subtopics. This is another reason to use proper headings rather than bold text for section titles: search engines read the structure, not the styling.

Yes. The URL is one of the first things search engines and visitors see. A clean URL like /summer-reading-program is more trustworthy and shareable than /entry-4821 or /pages/programs/2025/summer-reading-program-for-kids-and-teens-ages-6-18.

Your CMS generates a URL from the page title when you first create an entry. A few things to keep in mind:

• Keep it short. Two to four words is ideal.
• Use hyphens between words, not underscores or spaces.
• Avoid changing a URL after the page is published unless you have a good reason. Your site is set up to create a redirect automatically when a slug changes, so old links won’t break — but search engines still need time to catch up, and frequent changes can dilute your page’s ranking.

Disable the entry instead of deleting it. A disabled entry stays in the CMS but doesn't appear on the public site. You can re-enable it anytime. This is useful for seasonal content, past events you might bring back, or pages that need a temporary pause.

Treat deletion as permanent. Some CMSs offer a short recovery window, but it's not guaranteed. If you're unsure whether you'll need something again, disable it instead. Your site also has regular backups, so in an emergency your developer can help restore content.

The most common cause: the page you linked to was deleted, moved, or had its URL changed after you created the link. When linking to pages on your own site, use the CMS's built-in entry selector rather than pasting a URL. Entry-based links update automatically if the URL changes. For external links, the other site may have moved or removed the page.

All uploaded files live in the Assets section of your CMS. You can browse, search, and organize files there. Before uploading a new image, search the library first to avoid duplicates.

In most cases, create a page. Web pages are mobile-friendly, searchable, accessible, and easy to update. PDFs are none of those things — they can’t be read by screen readers reliably, they don’t adapt to phone screens, and updating one means re-uploading the entire file.

Use a PDF only when the document needs to be downloaded and kept as-is: a form that requires a signature, a print-ready brochure, or a file someone needs offline. If the content is meant to be read on your website, it belongs in a page, not a PDF.

Open the published page in a private/incognito window so you see exactly what a first-time visitor sees (no cached styles, no admin bar). Read it as if you've never seen the site before. Does the most important information come first? Can you tell what the page is about within a few seconds? Is there a clear next step? Check on your phone too — can someone quickly find a date, a phone number, or a registration link without scrolling through paragraphs?

Yes. Publishing a page doesn't mean people will find it on their own. Share it on your organization's social media channels, include it in your next newsletter, or send the link to colleagues who might pass it along. A new page with no links pointing to it is nearly invisible to search engines and visitors alike.

Your site has analytics (such as Plausible or Google Analytics). Two numbers worth checking occasionally:

• Page views tell you how many times the page was visited.
• Traffic sources tell you how people got there (search, social media, a link from another site, direct).

You don't need to interpret dashboards or set up reports. Just check once in a while to see whether the content you published is reaching people. If a page gets very little traffic, it may need a better title, a share on social media, or a link from a more visible page on your site.

New pages can take days or weeks to appear in search results. This is normal. You can speed things up by linking to the new page from other pages on your site, sharing the URL on social media, and making sure the page has a clear title and meta description. If the page still isn't indexed after a few weeks, ask your developer to submit it through Google Search Console.