Three separate states
Most confusion about "why can't I see my page" comes from treating these as one thing. They are not:
- Saved — your edits exist as a revision. Nothing about the live site has changed.
- Active — this particular revision is the one the record currently points at. Exactly one revision is active at a time.
- Published — the record as a whole is visible to visitors who are not signed in.
A page needs all three to be publicly visible: a revision with your content, that revision made active, and the record published.
Previewing
Preview renders the page from a specific revision, including revisions that are not active. That is what makes it useful for review: you can prepare a rewrite, have someone look at it, and only then make it active.
Because preview is tied to your signed-in session, a preview link will not work for someone who is not logged in — send them the change to review in the admin instead.
Publishing and unpublishing
Publishing sets a publish date on the record. Unpublishing clears it, and the page immediately starts returning 404 to anonymous visitors while remaining fully intact in the admin.
Unpublishing is the safe way to take something down. Deleting is not reversible in the same way and also breaks any link pointing at that URL.
Scheduling
You can set a publish date in the future, and the record goes live on its own at that time. You can also set an unpublish date to take something down automatically — useful for campaigns and notices with a known end date.
Scheduled dates are evaluated against the server's clock, so a page scheduled for "midnight" goes live at midnight server time, not necessarily yours.
If a published page still 404s
Work down this list:
- Is the record itself published, and is its publish date in the past?
- Are all of its parents published? An unpublished parent hides everything beneath it.
- Does the URL match the slug, including the parent segments?
- Is there a redirect rule pointing that path somewhere else?