Draft, Published, and Scheduled

Every page in WordPress has a status that controls whether it’s visible to the public. Understanding these statuses is important — especially because clicking the wrong button can make an unfinished page go live.

Published

A Published page is live and visible to anyone who visits your website. When you edit a Published page and click Update, your changes go live immediately.

Always use the Preview button before clicking Update on a live page. Once it’s live, visitors can see it.

Draft

A Draft is saved in WordPress but not visible to the public. It’s your safe workspace. You can edit a Draft as many times as you want without affecting the live site.

If a page is currently Published and you change its status to Draft, it will be hidden from visitors until you Publish it again. Use this carefully.

Scheduled

A Scheduled page is set to go live automatically at a future date and time. This is useful for time-sensitive content like season announcements.

Editors generally should not use Scheduled without checking with their web admin first, since scheduled publishing can be easy to forget and may catch people off guard.

What Happens When You Click Each Button

• Publish (on a new draft): Makes the page live for the first time.
• Update (on a published page): Saves changes and makes them live immediately.
• Save Draft: Saves your work without making anything visible to the public.
• Preview: Opens a preview in a new tab so you can see your changes before committing.

⚠️ Warning: There is no Undo after you click Update on a live page. Always Preview first. If you do publish something accidentally, go to the page’s revision history to restore a previous version.