---
title: "Publish your site (and the two different Publish buttons)"
url: "https://mycommunitysync.com/publish-your-site"
community: "CommunitySync"
description: "There are two buttons called Publish on two different screens — one chooses which site is public, the other pushes a page's content live. Here's which is which."
updated: "2026-08-13T11:28:38.772+00:00"
---

# Publish your site (and the two different Publish buttons)

*My Website*

Publishing trips people up because **two different buttons are both called Publish**,
on two different screens. Learn the difference once and the rest is easy.

| Where | What **Publish** does there |
|---|---|
| **My Website** (the list of your sites) | Chooses **which of your sites is the public one**. |
| **Inside the editor** (top bar) | Pushes **the page you're currently looking at** live. |

A useful way to hold it: the one on My Website answers *"which site?"*, the one in the
editor answers *"which changes?"*.

## Put your site online

![The publish confirmation](https://iaktsmonietvbikzietg.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/site-assets/kb/mw-publish-modal.png "Publishing asks you to confirm, and names the address your site will answer at."){size=md}

1. Go to **My Website**.
2. Find the site you want and click **Publish**.
3. A box appears — *"Publish this site — it becomes your public website at
   /a/your-handle."* Confirm.

The badge flips from **Draft** to **Live**, and a **View live** link appears next to
your address. A site you created from a starter is complete and ready, so this is
genuinely all it takes the first time.

## Publishing changes you make later

Once you're editing, the rules change. Inside the editor:

- **Save** stores your work as a private draft. Nothing public changes.
- **Publish** takes the page **you're on** and makes those changes public.

**Publish is per page.** If you edited your Home page, your About page and your
Contact page, you have to open each one and publish it. Saving all three and
publishing once only pushes the page you happened to be looking at.

The Publish button tells you where you stand: it turns **red with a dot** when the
current page has unpublished changes, and settles into a greyed-out **✓ Published**
when that page matches what visitors see.

## Only one site can be live

![A published site in the list](https://iaktsmonietvbikzietg.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/site-assets/kb/mw-hub-published.png "Once live, the badge reads Live and a View live link appears beside your address."){size=md}

You can keep three sites, but only one is public. Publishing a different one
**automatically takes the current one offline** — the list says as much: *"Only one
site is live at a time — publishing another swaps it in."* It's a swap, not a
duplicate, and nothing is lost; the old one becomes a draft you can publish again.

## Taking your site offline

Click **Take offline** on the live site's row. Your address stops serving and visitors
get a "not found" page. The site itself is untouched — publish it again whenever you want.

## Why changes take a few minutes to appear

Published pages are cached for speed, so an update can take about **five minutes** to
reach everyone, and occasionally a little longer. This is normal and there's nothing
to click to hurry it along.

Two things worth knowing:

- The **very first** time you publish, it appears immediately — there's nothing cached
  yet to get in the way.
- If everyone else can see the change and you can't, that's your own browser. Hard-refresh
  with **Ctrl+Shift+R** (**Cmd+Shift+R** on a Mac).

Adding `?something` to the end of the address does **not** force a fresh copy — that
trick works on some sites but not here. Just wait, or hard-refresh.

## Checking before you publish

Click the **eye icon** on any site row to open a private preview. It shows your current
draft, it's always up to date, and it works before you've ever published. Anyone with
that link can open it without signing in, so treat it as semi-private — fine for a
colleague, not for anything confidential.

### My Website

- [Your site and your community's brand](https://mycommunitysync.com/your-site-and-your-brand.md)
- [Your personal website — what it is and how it works](https://mycommunitysync.com/my-website-overview.md)
- [Claim your web address](https://mycommunitysync.com/claim-your-web-address.md)
- [Create your site from a starter](https://mycommunitysync.com/create-your-site-from-a-starter.md)
- [Edit your site](https://mycommunitysync.com/edit-your-site.md)
- [Manage your three sites](https://mycommunitysync.com/manage-your-three-sites.md)
- [Show your listings on your site](https://mycommunitysync.com/show-your-listings.md)
- [Where enquiries from your site go](https://mycommunitysync.com/where-your-leads-go.md)
- [Why isn't my site showing?](https://mycommunitysync.com/my-website-troubleshooting.md)