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Publish a web site

Publishing converts a map into a live documentation site with search, navigation, and a table of contents.

Before you begin

  • You need a map with at least one topic. The map structure becomes the site's navigation hierarchy.

  • Optionally, create condition profiles and variable sets if your content uses conditional blocks or variables.

Create a publication target

  1. Open a map and scroll to Publication Targets.

  2. Click New Target.

  3. Enter a name — e.g., "Public Docs."

  4. Select Web as the output format.

  5. Select a condition profile — choose which dimension values to include. Leave blank to include all content.

  6. Select a variable set — choose which variable values to substitute.

  7. Optionally add variable overrides for target-specific values.

Use condition profiles to publish different variants of the same content from a single map. For example, publish one target for end users (filtering out admin-only content) and another for administrators (including everything).

Publish

  1. Click Publish on the target.

  2. The publishing pipeline runs four stages:

    • Resolve — replaces component references with component content

    • Filter — removes conditional blocks that don't match the condition profile

    • Replace — substitutes variable tokens with values from the variable set

    • Render — converts the resolved content to HTML

  3. When complete, the target shows a URL.

View the published site

Click the URL to open your site. It includes:

  • Homepage with site name, logo, search bar, and page cards

  • Sidebar navigation matching the map hierarchy

  • Per-page table of contents generated from headings, with scroll tracking

  • Previous/next links between pages

  • Full-text search (Cmd+K)

  • Dark mode toggle

  • "Was this helpful?" feedback widget on each page

Republish after changes

After editing topics, components, or the map structure, click Publish again on the target. The site regenerates with the updated content.

Publishing creates a snapshot, not a live connection. Edits to topics, components, variables, or the map structure are not automatically reflected on the published site. You must click Publish again to regenerate the site with the latest content.

Unpublish

Toggle the target's published state to take the site offline. The URL stops serving content.

See also

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