Drafts
Content and site configuration in Draftist use a draft-first workflow. You edit a draft, preview it, and push it live when you're ready.
Draft and Live
Every piece of content — blog posts, doc pages, etc — has two versions: draft and live. The draft is your working copy. The live version is what readers see. The two stay independent until you choose to publish.
Site configuration works the same way. You can tweak fonts, colors, and other settings in the draft without affecting your live site.
Preview
Your draft site is always available at a separate preview address:
username.preview.draftist.io
This shows all your latest changes — unpublished content and unpublished configuration — so you can see exactly how things look before going live.
Content Lifecycle
After you publish something, you can still take it offline, bring it back, or delete it when you no longer need it.
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | The content exists only as a draft. You can preview it, but readers can't see it. |
| Published | The live version is available to readers. If you edit the draft after publishing, Draftist marks it as having unpublished updates. |
| Unpublished | The content has been taken offline because it needs more work. The draft stays available in preview, and you can publish it again later. |
| Archived | The content is offline because it is no longer relevant. It is kept as archived content and can be unarchived if needed. |
| In trash | The content is offline and scheduled for deletion. You can restore it before the retention period ends, or delete it permanently. |
Publishing always promotes the current draft to a Published live version.
Unpublished and Archived publications are both offline, but they mean different things. Use Unpublished when something went live too soon and needs more work — it is a to-do. Use Archived when the content is no longer relevant and is expected to stay out of the live site.
Managing Availability
Use the toolbar on the preview site to manage content availability:
- Publish — promotes the current draft to the live site.
- Unpublish — removes the live version from public access, but keeps the draft.
- Archive — removes the live version from public access and marks it archived.
- Unarchive — restores archived content to the live site.
- Delete — moves content to trash.
- Restore — restores trashed content to its previous state.
- Delete permanently — removes it permanently.
Trashed content is retained for 30 days before deletion.
Link and Availability Warnings
Draftist checks links before lifecycle changes.
When publishing, if the draft links to content that is not published, Draftist warns you. You can publish anyway, but those links will be broken until the linked content is published.
When unpublishing, archiving, or deleting content, Draftist checks whether live content links to it. If so, you'll be asked to review the affected links before continuing.
For doc pages, availability also depends on ancestors. If a parent page is unpublished, archived, or deleted, its published child pages become hidden from the live site until the parent is restored.