Guide 05 · Developer docs

Content types and custom entities

Which built-in type fits which purpose, how categories, tags, slugs, custom URLs and SEO settings behave across them, how revisions and publishing gate what the public sees, how to model a domain the platform has no type for, and where uploaded files live.

L1–L3

Unit 03 of 06 6 pages

Revisions, publishing and approval

Updated 23/10/2026 01:47

How a versioned record's content travels from an author's save to the live site: revisions and drafts, the published and active gates, scheduling, previewing, approval workflows and edit locks.

Start with revisions: every later page assumes the difference between a version, a draft and the active revision, and that every layout area getter in a template reads the active revision. The two gates come next, and they are the page to open when a saved or approved change does not show; they hold the truth table.

The pages after that extend the same two gates. Scheduling and previewing are the published gate in time and for authors, including the timezone question and what a headless front end must send. Approval workflows replace the save actions with steps, branches and approvals for teams that review. Edit locks cover two people in the same record. Template developers need the first two pages; the rest is for whoever sets up how a team publishes.

In this unit

Read in order

01 Revisions and the active revision A versioned record keeps its content in revisions, versions and drafts, and one version at a time is the active revision that every layout area getter reads. This page covers the kinds of revision, the save actions that create them, and what a template sees. 02 Published, active and draft: the two gates Whether a visitor sees a record, and which content they see, are decided by two separate fields: the published date and the active revision. This page explains each gate, gives the truth table and shows how to tell the causes apart. 03 Scheduled publishing and the timezone A record goes live when its published date passes and, for pages and books, comes down when its unpublish date passes. This page covers setting both, the worker that runs at each crossing, and the timezone question to settle before you rely on a schedule. 04 Previewing unpublished content An author checks a saved version on the record's own URL with ?revision=, which only a signed-in backend user can use. This page covers that, live preview, and what a headless front end must do to show content that is not live yet. 05 Approval workflows: steps, transitions and approvals An approval workflow makes changes pass through steps before a version goes live: authors save into a branch, transitions move the branch on, and named groups approve. This page explains each piece and who may do what, then walks through a two-step approval. 06 Edit locks and concurrent editing When two people open the same record in the admin, the Edit locks setting decides whether the second is told, kept out or neither. This page covers each mode, how a lock is released, why scripts ignore locks, and what a team that keeps colliding should change.