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Publishing content and assets in CMS Lite

Last updated on January 29, 2024

Learn about publishing and unpublishing content and assets. Find tips and troubleshooting guides to help you manage your published content.

On this page

Overview of the publishing process

Steps for publishing

  1. Initiate publish action:
    Select the 'publish' action using the button or action menu in CMS Lite
     
  2. Publish now or later:
    Choose immediate publishing or schedule for a future date/time
     
  3. Validation checks:
    CMS Lite checks for validation errors and displays messages for any issues. If there are issues, the job will not be published
     
  4. Workflow creation:
    If no errors, a job to publish the selected file(s) to the Production web server is created
     
  5. Workflow status monitoring:
    Track the publishing progress in the Workflow Status Pane. You can add or remove files if the job has not yet completed

Lock indicators disappear from Content Status Pane after successful publishing.

Publishing tips

Assets are not automatically published

Uploaded assets also need to be published. Failure to publish assets used on a page will result in broken links and missing images. To publish assets:

  • Use the Assets Menu screen. If using this method, publish them before the pages
  • Alternately, attach assets to a workflow set to Publish Later to ensure everything is published at the same time

Publishing left-hand navigation only

The Publish Left Navigation action on the Content Navigation Pane is designed to republish any changes made to the page order (information architecture) without publishing the page content. 

Bulk asset publishing

You can publish an entire folder, keeping in mind the 100 MB or 500 files limit per workflow. Size information is available in the Asset Status Grid and the Asset Folder Pane.

"Last updated" date

Published pages will show a new "last updated" date at the top of the page, unless it has been manually overridden.

Troubleshooting published content

Common issues after publishing

Content not appearing

If the content does not appear: 

  1. Check the status of the job in the Workflow Status Pane
  2. If the status indicates Failed_Publish, select the [Retry] action button to initiate the workflow again
  3. If the Workflow Status is COMPLETE, try refreshing the browser window by pressing Crtl + F5 to clear the cache
  4. If the publish job continues to fail, submit a Service Request to determine the root problem

If your content doesn't update, try viewing it in a different browser (example, open the URL in Microsoft Edge, or Chrome, or Firefox). If it appears correctly in the other browser, it is just a cache issue that should not affect most other viewers.

Published page not in the left-hand navigation

If the published page is not appearing in the left-hand navigation, check to see if the selected checkbox Hide from navigation? box is selected in the Content Settings tab.

Differences between Quality Assurance (QA) and Production (PROD) servers

When viewing page content on the Quality Assurance (QA) web server, all pages will appear in the left-hand navigation (unless Hide from Navigation has been selected), and all associated assets will render. However, only published pages will appear in the left-hand navigation on the Production web server and only published assets will be accessible.

  • QA server: All pages and assets are visible regardless of their publish status
  • PROD server: Only published content and assets appear on the Production server

Unpublishing content

Once content has been published to the Production web server, it may be Unpublished (removed from the Production web server).

Unpublishing is not deleting

When you unpublish a page, it remains accessible in the CMS Lite application and viewable on the QA web server. 

If you delete the node, the page is permanently removed from the CMS Lite and is only retrievable by submitting a service request to GDX.servicedesk@gov.bc.ca.

Unpublishing a page with child nodes

It is important to remember when unpublishing pages to check the page hierarchy in the Navigation Tree in the Content Menu. If you unpublish a page that has child nodes, links to those pages will be broken and they will not appear in the left-hand navigation. You may need to move child nodes to make them accessible. 

Handling child items

Check for child pages (or nodes) before unpublishing to avoid breaking links.

Resources

Video tutorial

Watch the video tutorial for a detailed guide on the publishing process.

Get help

Contact the GDX Service Desk at GDX.servicedesk@gov.bc.ca for assistance with publishing issues.