▲Publishing and domain

The working version becomes the public website. Until then, nobody but you sees the change — afterwards, everyone does.

The button is at the top of the dashboard. Until you press it, every change remains a draft, regardless of whether you worked in the fields or in the live editor.

You can change the content and publish again — but what has been out there has been out there. Search engines and visitors may have seen the interim version.

That is why the preview is worth more than any withdrawal. And for larger rebuilds, the release: with it, everything appears together instead of bit by bit.

A release groups several changes so that they appear together — for example all the pages for the new course programme at once instead of bit by bit.

You do not need this for everyday work: you publish individual pages directly where they are. Releases are worthwhile for larger rebuilds or when something is to go online on a fixed date.

Procedure: create a release, attach the pages and posts concerned, check them at leisure, and put the whole bundle live with one click.

As a safety net: because it is recorded what belonged together, you can trace, if in doubt, what went online and when.

That sounds like bookkeeping, and it is — until the day someone asks since when a particular price has been on the page.

In the settings under Domain. This makes your site reachable at yourdomain.com instead of at a test address.

Encryption — the padlock in the browser — then sets itself up automatically.

The order is important: first the DNS record at your domain provider, then connecting. The other way round, issuing the certificate fails, and does so repeatedly.

Until a DNS change is known everywhere, minutes to hours pass, depending on the provider. During this time it can happen that the site already works for you and not yet for a colleague — that is normal and not an error.

So do not check every minute; check again the next day.

In the site settings, or with taking it offline in the workspace.

Think about what is left afterwards: search engines have the page in their index, directories link to it, someone has sent it in an email. If the site is to be gone permanently, a short notice page at the same address is better than an error message.

Six points that take ten minutes altogether:

1. Legal notice (Impressum) complete — no placeholders, an address for service.
2. Privacy notice matches what the site actually does.
3. Contact details are correct — actually ring the phone number.
4. Image rights cleared.
5. Preview on a mobile phone looked at.
6. URL slugs of the pages as they are to stay.

Then publish. Everything else can be followed up at leisure.

Whenever a version is finished — there is no reason to save things up.

The exception is larger rebuilds: there the release is the right tool, so that nothing appears half-finished.

What you should avoid is the opposite: working in the draft for weeks and then pushing everything out at once. The bigger the jump, the greater the likelihood that something unnoticed goes out with it.

Both should work, but one of them is the official one — otherwise your own pages compete with each other. That is what the canonical tag is for.

In practice: decide on one form, use it everywhere (business card, vehicle, signature) and let the other point to it.

Technically yes — but use one as the main address and let the others point to it.

The reason is the same as with “www”: two equivalent addresses for the same content split the effect instead of concentrating it. And it is confusing for visitors when the same page appears under two names.

Two common cases:

• The domain has been enabled before the DNS record was in place. Then issuing the certificate fails, and does so repeatedly — after several failed attempts, a temporary block by the certificate authority kicks in. Wait an hour, check the DNS record and try again.
• A required field is missing — often in the legal master data.

If neither applies, it is worth a report; give the website and the time.

Five things, in two minutes:

1. Open the site yourself — with a hard reload, otherwise your browser shows the old version.
2. Look at it on a mobile phone.
3. The padlock in the address bar — is encryption in place?
4. Click legal notice and privacy notice. They are in the footer.
5. Submit the contact form once. Does the notification arrive?

Point 5 is forgotten most often and noticed latest: without a recipient, the responses sit silently in the admin.