Readers keep seeing the live version of a published article for as long as you are editing it. Your edits are held as a separate set of unpublished changes, and the live article only updates when you publish them. That makes it safe to reorganise sections or rewrite large parts of a live article over several sessions.
What happens when you edit
As soon as you change a published article, the status dropdown in the editor header switches to Unpublished changes, marked with a dot. The public page is untouched. Autosave keeps protecting the edits in the meantime, as with any draft (see Autosave, recovery & edit conflicts).
Changes to the article's settings are held the same way. A new URL slug on a published article takes effect only when you publish (see Change an article's URL slug).
Publish or discard
When you are ready, open the Unpublished changes dropdown and choose one of:
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Publish changes | Makes your edits live. The article gets a new version in its history and the previous one is marked superseded. |
| Discard changes | Throws away every edit since the last publish and returns the editor to the published version. |
You can also publish pending changes without opening the editor: select the article in the list and run the bulk Publish action, which publishes drafts and pending changes on published articles alike (see Bulk actions).
Spot articles with pending edits
In the article list, a dot next to the Published chip means the article has unpublished changes. To see only those articles, set the status filter to Unpublished changes.