Publishing
Publishing to one site or several, updating what is already live, and taking it back down.
Publishing in Citeca is deliberately boring: press the button, every connected site gets the article, and you are told exactly what happened at each one. No queue to watch, no guessing.
Automatic or on demand#
Both, and they are independent of each other.
| Mode | What happens | Set where |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-publish | Finished articles publish on their scheduled date without being asked | Settings → Publishing |
| Publish now | The Publish button in the editor, whenever you want | Article editor |
| Draft only | Articles are delivered to your CMS as drafts and never go public on their own | Per connection |
Draft mode is per connection, not global
You can have WordPress publish immediately while Webflow stages drafts for review. Each connection keeps its own setting, and the editor tells you which is which after publishing.
Publishing to several sites at once#
If you have connected WordPress and Webflow and a webhook, pressing Publish sends the article to all three. They are independent: one refusing the article says nothing about the others, and one failure does not hold up the rest.
Afterwards, the panel at the top of the editor lists every destination with its own status, timestamp and link:
- Live — public on that site, and the View link opens it.
- Draft on site — delivered, but that connection stages drafts, so there is nothing public to link to yet.
- Failed — refused, with the exact error from the platform shown underneath.
Note
A partial result is reported as a partial result. If two destinations took the article and one refused it, you are told that rather than shown a green tick.
Republishing and edits#
Editing a published article and pressing Republish updates the post that already exists on each site. It does not create a second copy.
This is matched on the article’s slug, which is why the slug is stable: WordPress updates that post, Webflow patches that collection item. Without it you would accumulate my-article-2 and my-article-3 competing with the original for the same prompt — the fastest way to waste a good article.
What republishing guarantees
4 checks
- The same URL, so existing links and any indexing already earned are kept.
- One post per article per site, no duplicates.
- A post you reverted to draft by hand is found and updated, not bypassed.
- New URLs submitted for indexing; unchanged ones left alone.
Unpublishing#
The Unpublish button appears in the editor once an article is out. It takes the article off every site it was published to and leaves a draft behind on each.
- 1
Press Unpublish
You are shown exactly which sites are about to change, by name, before anything happens.
- 2
Each site is taken down
WordPress reverts the post to a draft. Webflow unpublishes the live item and marks it as a draft in the CMS. Joomla sets the article back to unpublished. Nothing is deleted anywhere.
- 3
The result is listed per destination
Each one shows Taken down with a timestamp, or the error if a site refused. The article’s status goes back to Draft.
It is reversible, and it stays reversible
Because each site keeps the article as a draft, pressing Publish afterwards puts it straight back on the same URL. The content, the slug and the post itself were never lost.
Auto-publish will not undo it
An unpublished article is marked as deliberately taken down, so the scheduler leaves it alone. If it were not, the next run would publish it straight back and quietly reverse your decision. Pressing Publish yourself is what opts it back in.
If one site refuses to let go — an expired token, a deleted collection — the others are still taken down and Unpublish stays available so you can retry just the one that failed once you have fixed it.
| Platform | What unpublishing does |
|---|---|
| WordPress (plugin) | Post set back to draft, content intact |
| WordPress (application password) | Post set back to draft, content intact |
| Webflow | Live item unpublished, CMS item marked as draft |
| Joomla | Article set back to unpublished, content intact |
| Everything else | Not automatic yet — you are told plainly and pointed at your own CMS |
Note
Unpublishing is never blocked by billing. Taking your own content off your own site is not something to hold hostage.
What gets sent to your site#
- Semantic HTML — real headings, lists, tables and quotes, not a wall of divs.
- Images, uploaded into your own media library so they survive independently of us.
- Meta description and slug.
- Structured data for the FAQ block, so engines can parse the answers.
- Internal links to your other articles and relevant pages.
Styling is your theme’s job
We send the content; your CSS decides how it looks. An article that arrives unstyled is almost always a template with no styles for that content type rather than a bad publish.
Common questions
Can I publish to some destinations but not others?
Publishing goes to everything currently connected. To exclude a site, disconnect it in Settings → Publishing, or set it to draft mode so nothing there becomes public.
What happens if a site is down when an article is due?
The attempt is recorded with the error and retried automatically a few times. If it keeps failing, the article waits and you can publish it by hand once the site is back.
Does unpublishing delete the article from Citeca?
No. It stays in your calendar as a draft, with its content and score, ready to publish again.
Why is my Webflow article a draft when WordPress went live?
Because that Webflow connection is set to save drafts. Change it under Manage on the Webflow card and republish.
Can I change the URL an article publishes to?
The slug comes from the title, so editing the title before the first publish changes it. Changing it after publishing creates a new post at the new URL and leaves the old one where it is, so it is better to settle the title first.
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us and we will fix it.