Publish a web site
Publishing turns a map into a live documentation site with navigation, search, and a table of contents. You create a publication target for the map, publish it, and Topicary serves the result at its own URL.
Before you begin
You need a map with at least one topic. The map structure becomes the site's navigation.
Every topic in the map must be free of draft paragraphs and unresolved suggestions, and free of blocking validation errors. Both checks are described under Clear the pre-publish checks.
Optionally, set up condition profiles and variable sets if your content uses conditional blocks or variables.
Create a publication target
Open the map you want to publish, then open its Publishing panel and click Set up publishing. Once a target exists you can also reach the same page from Publishing in the sidebar, which lists your targets and offers Manage on each one. Before your first target exists, the Publishing page has nothing to list and sends you back to the maps list.
On the Publishing: <map name> page, type a name into the target field, for example "Public Docs".
Choose the output format: Web or PDF.
Click Add target.
The new target appears with its settings below it. A web target always shows Domain, Access, SEO, and Search engine. Conditions, Variable set, and Locale appear only when your plan covers them and the project has something for them to point at. Variable overrides appears on plan alone, from Team up. Set the ones you need. For what each setting does and when it appears, see Publication target settings.
Use conditions to publish different variants of one map from one source. Publish one target for end users with the admin-only content filtered out, and another for administrators with everything in it.
Clear the pre-publish checks
Two checks stand between a target and a live site.
Unfinished content blocks the Publish button before you click it. If any topic or component in the map still carries a draft paragraph or an unresolved track-changes suggestion, the page shows a banner: N unfinished blocks must be resolved before this map can be published. Under it is one link per offending block, such as Draft paragraph in "Getting started" (block 3), taking you straight to that paragraph in the editor. The Publish button stays disabled until nothing is left.
If your plan has no accept and reject controls for suggestions, the banner also offers Strip pending suggestions. It removes the review markup and keeps every word of the text: nothing is deleted.
Validation errors are checked when you publish. If any topic has a blocking validation error, publishing is refused with a count, and you fix them in the Validation panel.
If the pre-flight check cannot run, the banner says so: Could not check for unfinished content. Publishing will re-check. The same gate runs again on the server when you publish, so a failed check never lets unfinished content through.
Publish
Click Publish on the target.
Publishing runs as a background job, reporting progress as it goes: it builds the site, records the page addresses, then generates social preview images, embeddings, AI-readiness scores, and the external search index.
When the job finishes, the target shows its URL.
Where your site is served
Topicary uses the first of these that applies:
Address | When it is used |
|---|---|
| A custom domain has been added and verified (Team) |
| The target has a subdomain, which it gets automatically at creation |
| Neither of the above is available |
A new web target claims your project's subdomain automatically, if no other target has taken it. You are not asked to pick one. Change it later in the target's Domain settings.
Publishing also attaches the subdomain to the hosting provider, which is what gives it routing and a TLS certificate. That step is best effort: if it fails, the site still works at /sites/<target id>, and re-publishing retries the attachment.
See what readers see
Open any topic in the editor and click View live, to the right of the topic title. It opens that topic's published page in a new tab. The button is hidden when the topic is not on any published site, and it becomes a menu when the topic is published on more than one site, so you can pick which one to open.
Update after changes
Editing a topic does not put the edit live straight away. The published site is served from a cache, and readers keep seeing the cached pages until something refreshes them.
Publishing refreshes the cache immediately, which is the only way to control when an edit appears. Be aware that the cache also expires on its own after 24 hours, and a few other actions expire it early: merging a branch, archiving a topic, or changing the target's own settings. When that happens the site is rebuilt from your current content, so edits you never published can go live on their own.
Publishing does not freeze a copy of your content. Treat unpublished edits to a live target as work that may become visible within 24 hours, and keep genuinely unfinished work in a branch or in draft paragraphs, which the pre-publish gate holds back.
To push your edits live, click the target's publish button anywhere it appears: on the dashboard, on the Publishing overview, in the map editor toolbar, or in the editor's Publishing panel. Its label tells you where you stand:
Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
Publish | The target has never been published |
Update | The site is live and the content has changed since |
Published | The site is live and up to date. Still clickable, to re-publish and refresh the live site |
A published site is served from a cache, so edits to topics, components, variables, or the map structure are not reflected instantly. Cached pages refresh within 24 hours, or you can click Update on the target to publish the latest content immediately.
The Publishing: <map name> page has Publish and Unpublish only. The three-state button lives on the dashboard, the Publishing overview, the map toolbar, and the editor's Publishing panel.
Unpublish
Click Unpublish on the target to take the site offline. The content stops being served, and the subdomain is detached from the hosting provider, so the address stops resolving to your site rather than showing empty pages. Publishing again re-attaches it.
See also
The publishing pipeline: how the four-stage pipeline transforms your content into published output
Published site features: navigation, search, dark mode, and AI features available on your published site
Published site SEO: automatic SEO features generated for every published page
Customize your site's branding: apply custom colors, logos, fonts, and favicons to your site
Publication target settings: detailed reference for domains, access, conditions, variable sets, and overrides