CMS single-item publishing

CMS content has its own publishing track, separate from the rest of the site. And it's super useful when we want to push a quick content change without disrupting any work happening on the canvas. But there are a few things to keep in mind to make sure we’re publishing with confidence.

So in this lesson, we'll walk through creating a new CMS item and getting it live, we'll update that same CMS item, then we'll talk about when to full-site publish (versus publishing CMS items), and finally, we'll unpublish a CMS item.

If we have time, we'll cover the debate over what's faster to say out loud: "CMS" or "Collection," even though they have the same number of syllables.

First part: in Webflow, let's head to the CMS tab. We'll create a new item. We'll write up a new blog post. Type, type, type. Now, when we're done, we can save it as a draft, which means it'll be saved in our CMS but will not be published. But if we're ready, in the dropdown menu, there are some more options. We can hit "Publish now." That does exactly what it says: this one item goes live, right now, without touching anything else on our site.

But there's also "Queue for next site publish." Instead of going live now, the item lines up and goes out with the next full-site publish (whether that's you or someone else on your team).

For this one, let's publish it now. Now it's on the live site. But where did it actually update on our site? Here's the post on its own Collection page. And here it is on the blog index page, inside a Collection List. Basically, anywhere our Collection or that specific Collection item is being referenced is updated.

That's our CMS item. How do we update it? Let's go back into that item and change something.

Same as before, Webflow saves our work automatically. But this time, the status becomes "Changes in draft," which means the item is still live on our site, but the changes we just made have not been published.

This is where it might get confusing. The live version stays exactly as it was until you publish the item. Which is actually useful: we can keep working on the content without worrying about what our site visitors see.

When we're ready, we can "Publish now" to push just this item's changes live, or queue them up with the next full-site publish.

Once published, that update appears everywhere the item is being used (its Collection page and any Collection List pulling it in).

So that’s publishing Collection items, but here's the important distinction between publishing Collection items and doing a full-site publish.

When we publish updates to a Collection item, we're publishing its content (that item's text, its images, and its fields).

When we publish updates to the whole site, we're publishing just the design, settings, and any static content on the site.

So if we rewrite a blog post, we publish the item and its content. If we redesign the blog post layout, we publish the full-site (or if we're on an Enterprise plan, we can publish just the Collection page template). And if we did both, we'll need to do both.

Now, one habit worth building: Before we run a full-site publish or (if we're not the one publishing) before we close out of Webflow, be sure to check the status of the CMS items. Anything that isn't ready to go live should be set to "Draft" or "Changes in draft." And if something's queued that shouldn't be, open the dropdown and choose "Remove from queue." This is important to keep unfinished CMS content from publishing with a full-site publish.

Okay, last part: We can remove Collection items super easily.

Open the item, go to the dropdown, and choose Unpublish. That pulls it off your live site immediately and sets its status back to Draft.

We can also archive an item. The item stays in our CMS, but it doesn't come off our live site until our next full-site publish. Which means we can always bring it back later.

And that's it. Quick recap.

Our work in the CMS is always saved, but it sits as Draft or Changes in draft until we queue it, schedule it, or publish it now.

Publishing an item updates the content, anywhere that item is used. Publishing the Collection page updates the design.

And we can take an item off the live site by unpublishing it, or by archiving it and then running a full-site publish.

The biggest takeaway is that publishing a CMS item updates CMS content, and only CMS content. So if we published our CMS item and the live site still looks wrong, it probably needs a design change, which means publishing the Collection page template or our full site.

Be sure to check out Webflow University to learn more about CMS publishing and other publishing features.

We never settled the CMS-versus-Collection debate.

So we polled it. The results are in. They're inconclusive.