Draft, publish, revise or trash content
Your options for creating and removing content from Mass.gov.
Creating content
Once you start to create content in the CMS, you have the option to save it in one of the following states:
Prepublished Draft - You can see it in the CMS, but it isn’t visible publicly
Prepublished Needs Review - You and those you share it with can see it in the CMS, allowing it to be reviewed by those with CMS accounts before publishing. Commonly used by CMS authors who are not allowed to publish content, but need to have it approved by a CMS editor before going live
Published - For all the world to see. Even if your content isn't connected to other content on the site, it will still be indexed by search engines.
Trash - Not visible to the public; can be restored to the CMS
When you create new content, Prepublished Draft is the default setting in the dropdown menu. You can find this menu next to the Save button at the bottom of the CMS screen when working on any piece of content.
Note: Creating, publishing, and trashing content works similarly to doing so with documents, though with some differences. Learn more about the document publishing process.
You can generate temporary links to share with those who need to preview content but don't have CMS accounts.
Making changes to published content
When you are making changes to published content, your changes can either be saved as a draft or made immediately visible to the public.
When you save content as a draft it is visible in the CMS, but not to the public until you publish it. Changes made to the draft will not affect the public-facing version until you decide to publish it.
Hint: The draft version will get "/latest" attached to the end of its URL when you're in the CMS.
The draft essentially exists as a private overlay of the published content, and you can share a copy of it both with those who have CMS access and those who don’t.
Once you’re ready to make a change to published content, select the Change to: dropdown menu at the bottom of the screen and make your selection. You’ll see the current state of the content and options for changing that state, such as “Published,” as shown in this screenshot. Select Save to make your selection.
Sending content to Trash
The Trash function works a lot like the recycle bin on your computer: You can place items that you don’t need anymore, or you can get them back if you need them again.
After you’ve opened your content from the My Content or All Content tab, or via the Edit button on the content itself, find the Change to: drop-down menu at the bottom of the page. Select Trash and click Save. This will save any changes and move your content to the trash.
You can do this for both unpublished drafts and published content. If you move published content to the trash, it will no longer be available on the web.
You can recover a piece of content from the Trash following the same steps. The only difference is where you start. To recover a piece of content, choose the Trash tab from the top menu.
Once you've opened the page editor, scroll down to the Change to: drop-down menu at the bottom of the page. You'll notice there's only 1 option, Unpublished. Select Save.
You've now restored this piece of content. If you want to publish it, you'll need to go back in and change the status from "Unpublished" to "Published."
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