Publishing

Branches & publishing

Every page in Orbit has a status that answers the only questions an editor has: is it live, and how do I get it live? The status shows as a dot next to the page in the sidebar and as a banner on the page itself, and the Publish button is right there on the page. Developers get the same flow on top of ordinary git branches and commits — nobody has to think in branches.

The statuses

Status What it means What you can do
New (hollow purple dot) A page that has never been published Save it, then Publish / Ask to publish
Live (green) What visitors see is exactly this page Edit it — saving makes it Changed
Changed (amber) Live, with saved changes that aren’t live yet See what changed, Publish / Ask to publish
Waiting for approval (blue) Someone has asked for it to be published Approvers: Publish or Send back. The asker: withdraw

Saving puts a change on the preview site. There’s no separate “send” step: a few seconds after you save, Orbit sends your changes to the preview site in the background. Publishing puts it on the live site.