Publishing

You already built Maya's homepage hero. Saving the composer is not enough. This page is how that hero goes live — first on Staging, then on Production. Publish creates the snapshot a token fetches. History and restore live on the next page.

What you can do

You already opened Maya's homepage hero from Widgets and composed it. Saving that work is not enough. This page is how the hero goes live — first on Staging, then on Production.

Two everyday jobs:

Put the homepage hero on Staging. QA loads it with a Staging token. Maya can share a preview before the live site moves.
Ship the same hero to Production. The live site fetches the Production snapshot. Development stays a live draft — its tab is labeled Integrate, not Publish.

A widget is the page. A collection is a block on that page. Publishing is how either one becomes a snapshot a token can fetch.

An agent can publish that same snapshot after you connect MCP. Name the widget. The steps are on Widgets from an agent.

How draft versus snapshot thinks

The composer edits the draft. Saving writes that draft. Nothing a Staging or Production token fetches changes until you publish.

Publishing compiles the draft into an immutable snapshot— layout, copy, the CSS catalog on that widget, and every embedded collection it owns. The snapshot gets a published key and a version number. The first publish is 1.0.0. Each later publish increments the patch. The draft keeps evolving on its own. Publishing never overwrites it.

Here is the case that surprises people. Maya syncs new tokens from the project onto the hero, hits save, and expects the live site to move. It does not. Sync from Project is a draft change. Live embeds update only when she publishes again.

Publishing has its own groups, under Utility Functions on the team's User Groups page. In Staging, View Published Resource In Staging lets you use the Publish tab — without it the tab shows Permission Required. Post Publish To Staging adds the publish button. Production works the same way with View Published Resource In Production and Post Publish To Production.

Widget Access covers opening and editing widgets. No level includes promoting or publishing, not even Admin. Promoting needs Post Promote To Staging or Post Promote To Production, under the same heading.

Publish the homepage hero

You do this on the widget management page in Staging or Production. If the hero still lives only in Development, promote the draft first — then come back here.

Open the organization → team → project → environment you want to publish in. Staging is the QA stop. Production is the live site.
Find the orange Widgets card. Click View Widgets, then Maya's homepage hero — or the Default Widget if that is the hero.
Open the Publish tab. Only Staging and Production have one. On Development — or any environment you named yourself — the same tab is labeled Integrate and has no publish button. Those environments stream the live draft — see Development Integration.
If this widget has never been published here, Publishing Status says so. Click Publish Now. If it is already published, the Made changes? card offers Publish New Version.
Confirm Publish to Staging or Publish to Production. Optionally expand Tag this published version and add a Tag Name and Tag Description — useful when you scan history later.
After success, View Published Version opens the snapshot. Note the published key. That is what a Staging or Production token fetches.

That is a safe stop. The hero is live in this environment. Come back when you need a later version, or open History, compare, and restore if last Tuesday's snapshot was the right one.

If this project requires approval, those buttons say Submit for approval instead. Nothing goes live until enough approvers have signed off, and the live snapshot is the copy that was submitted. That guide is Approvals.

Promote versus publish

These two buttons sit near each other and do different jobs. Use the wrong one and you either copy a draft into the next environment without going live, or you expect Promote to ship a snapshot it never creates.

	Promote	Publish
What it does	Copies the draft into Staging or Production under the same key. It does not publish.	Creates an immutable snapshot in the environment you are already in. That is what a token fetches.
When you reach for it	The hero is ready to leave Development for Staging, or Staging for Production. Same slot, next environment.	QA or the live site should load this version now.
Where it lives	Development shows Promote to Staging. Staging shows Promote to Production. Clicks are on Widgets.	Staging and Production only. Development shows Integrate instead.

Copy To is not the pipeline. It is only for extra environments you named yourself. The Projects, Environments & Tokens guide already draws that line.

Shared versus embedded on publish

A shared collection has its own Publish tab and its own published key. Publishing a new version updates every live widget that references it — you do not republish each hero. An embedded collection cannot publish in isolation. Its Publish tab says so. It travels inside the parent widget snapshot.

The first time you publish a widget that still uses an unpublished shared collection, RuleCMS publishes that collection too. After that, the two keys move independently. How to choose the model — and why Promote / Copy To hide on an embedded copy — is Collections.

How this fits

A widget is the content. A collection is a reusable block. Publishing is how the site gets a key. Tokens live on Projects, Environments & Tokens. A ruleset later chooses which published widget a visitor sees.

Publish Maya's homepage hero to Staging. When QA is happy, publish the same draft to Production. If this morning's snapshot was wrong, History, compare, and restore is the rollback — not a rewrite in the composer.