Publication target settings
Each publication target carries the settings below. You edit them on the Publishing: <map name> page, where each group is a labelled subsection under the target.
Setting | Subsection | Description | Applies to |
|---|---|---|---|
Name | (target header) | Display name for the target, set when you create it. There is no rename control on this page | All |
Output format | (chosen at creation) |
| All |
Subdomain | Domain | Subdomain for the published URL | Web only |
Custom domain | Domain | Your own domain for the published site (Team plan) | Web only |
Access mode | Access |
| Web only |
SEO | SEO | Title template, description, language, and noindex | Web only |
Start page | SEO | Which topic serves as the site homepage | Web only |
Search backend | Search engine | Built-in search, or an external provider (Business plan) | Web only |
Condition profile | Conditions | Which filter values to include, for example Audience: Admin (Business plan) | All |
Variable set | Variable set | Which variable set supplies token values (Team plan) | All |
Variable overrides | Variable overrides | Per-target value overrides for specific variables (Team plan) | All |
Locale | Locale | Language of this target, for multi-locale publishing (Business plan) | All |
PDF layout | PDF settings | Page size, margins, cover, table of contents, headers and footers | PDF only |
Subsections appear only when they apply. Conditions needs at least one filter group defined in the project, Variable set needs at least one set, and Locale needs more than one project locale. Each of those three also needs the plan that covers it, and is hidden without it; Variable overrides is hidden on plan alone, below Team. Domain, Access, SEO, and Search engine always appear on a web target. SEO is ungated; in the other three, the settings your plan does not cover sit there disabled, labelled with the plan that unlocks them.
Vocabulary: the project-level definitions live under Configure > Filters, where a dimension is a filter group. On a publication target, the same feature is labelled Conditions, and the selection you save there is the target's condition profile. They are the same thing.
Condition profile
The condition profile is the set of filter values this target publishes. You build it by selecting values in the target's Conditions subsection; there is no text field to type it into. Stored, it refers to filter groups and their values by internal identifiers rather than by the names you see, so it cannot be hand-written or copied between projects.
Content wrapped in a filtered block is included only if the block's group and value match the profile.
An empty condition profile (or no profile at all) includes all content regardless of filters. The same applies group by group: a filter group you leave untouched is not filtered, so every block tagged with it appears. There is no "exclude everything" default.
Typical selections:
Target | What to select |
|---|---|
Admin web docs | Audience: Admin. Platform: Web |
End-user docs, all platforms | Audience: End User. Platform: Web, Mobile, Desktop |
Internal docs | Audience: Admin, Developer. Platform: Web |
Variable set
Select a variable set from the project's defined sets. All variable tokens in the content resolve to values from this set.
Variable overrides
Key-value pairs that override specific values from the selected variable set. Useful for changing one or two values without creating a separate set, for example overriding api_base_url for a staging target.
{
"api_base_url": "https://staging-api.example.com",
"support_email": "staging-support@example.com"
}Variable overrides take precedence over the variable set. If the same key exists in both the set and the overrides, the override value wins. A key that exists only in the overrides is still used: it resolves any token carrying that key, even though the set never defined it.
Start page
Choose which topic readers land on at the site root. If you do not set one, the site shows a card grid of top-level topics.
Subdomain
A new web target claims your project's subdomain automatically when it is created, provided no other target has taken it. You are never asked to choose one, and you can change it afterwards in the target's Domain subsection.
Rules for a subdomain you type yourself:
Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Anything else is stripped out.
Repeated hyphens collapse to one, and leading or trailing hyphens are removed.
At least 3 and at most 63 characters, after stripping.
These names are reserved by the platform and cannot be used:
www,app,api,mail,send,admin,status.
Publishing attaches <subdomain>.topicary.com to the hosting provider, which gives it routing and a TLS certificate. Changing the subdomain on a published target detaches the old name and attaches the new one.
Attaching a subdomain is best effort. If the hosting provider rejects or drops the request, publishing still succeeds and the site is still readable at /sites/<target id>, but the subdomain does not serve. Publish again to retry the attachment.
Custom domain
A custom domain, for example docs.example.com, is a Team plan capability. Adding one registers it with the hosting provider and marks it pending. Once you have pointed your DNS at the provider, verification promotes it to active, and only then does the site serve there.
The published URL follows one precedence, used for canonical URLs and the View live button:
The custom domain, when it is active
<subdomain>.topicary.com/sites/<target id>
Two surfaces do not follow it. The "open site" link on the Publishing: <map name> page and the one on the dashboard's publishing card always use the subdomain, or /sites/<target id> when there is none, even when an active custom domain is serving the site. Use View live in the topic editor when you want the address readers actually have.
Access mode
Web targets are public by default: anyone with the URL can read them. Setting the access mode to password puts the site behind a shared password, and readers get a session that lasts 24 hours. Password protection is a Team plan capability. Changing the password immediately signs out existing readers.
SEO
Web targets carry a title template, meta description, site language, and a noindex toggle. These drive the meta tags, sitemap, and structured data emitted for the published site.
Publishing states
State | Description | URL behavior |
|---|---|---|
Published | Site is live | Serves the cached build of the target's content, refreshed on publish and on its own within 24 hours |
Unpublished | Site is offline | The subdomain is detached, so the address no longer resolves to your site |
Switch between states with Publish and Unpublish on the target.
See also
Publish a web site: step-by-step guide to creating and publishing a web target
The publishing pipeline: how publishing runs as a background job and when content goes live
Conditions versus variables: when to use condition profiles versus variable sets in your targets
Override variables for each target: how variable overrides work within target settings