Help CenterHelp Center / Online store and design · How-to
Review what changed and make your draft the live website.
Publishing makes the draft the website customers see. Each publish is a numbered version you can go back to.
Select Publish at the end of the top bar. Pending edits are saved first. The dialog Publish changes opens: "Make the draft live on" and your address.
The editor compares the draft with the live version and lists what differs, for example "5 changes since the last publish". A theme switch is listed as "Switch theme: … → …".
On a store that has never been published it says Nothing is live yet: "Everything in this draft goes live."
Note (optional), for example "Ramadan homepage", up to 200 characters. The note is shown in version history.
Select Publish. The dialog confirms "Version N is live — the storefront updates within a few seconds." Select Done.
The dialog has a When switch with Publish now and Schedule. See Schedule a publish.
The first publish of a store still in draft does not open it to everyone. The dialog says: "Your store is now a password-protected preview. Share the password to show it; the public sees the password page until you go live."
Find the password in Online Store takes you to the panel. See Password page and Store status and going live.
If links in the draft point to pages or categories that do not exist, the dialog counts them: "2 links point to missing pages or categories — shoppers won’t see them." "You can still publish. Create the pages in Panel → Pages, or change the links."
Customers do not see those links until the page exists.
| What you see | Reason |
|---|---|
| Publish is greyed out, tooltip "You do not have permission to publish" | Your account can edit but not publish. Ask the shop owner to publish |
| "The draft has errors that must be fixed first." | A setting has a value the theme does not accept. The problems are listed; fix them and try again |
| "The draft matches the live storefront — nothing to publish." | There is nothing new. Publish is greyed out |
| "The draft was changed elsewhere since you reviewed it (another tab or a colleague). Nothing was published — reload the draft to see what would go live." | Someone saved in between. Choose Load their draft or Keep mine, review again, then publish |
| "We could not compare with the live version. Close this and try again." | A connection problem |