Drafts/Offline & hidden pages
Get it right before you get it out there.
The pages on your site can exist in one of three modes:
Online
Hidden from Nav
Offline (draft)
Online
All pages start out like this. An online page is fully accessible to everyone and visible in the site navigation.
Hidden from Nav
These can be viewed if you have the exact URL, which means you can link to it from another page, email or instant message. The key difference is that the page does not appear in the site's navigation. Without knowing the link for the page, a visitor may not realise it exists or know how to get to it.
Offline (draft)
An Offline page can only be viewed when you are logged in to make changes to the site. You could also think of this as a draft page. The page does not appear in navigation and even if you have a link to the page, you will not be able to access it if you are logged out.
What if I make a page Offline that has subpages underneath it?
If a parent page has a more restrictive mode, then its subpages inherit that mode. So in this case, all of the subpages also act as Offline (draft).
The same is true if you hide a parent page from nav, all of its subpages also appear to be Hidden from Nav.
Offline and hidden pages are only accesible through the new style site map. To have the new style sitemap, you need to be subscribed for the Subpages bolt-on. So how can I tell if I have subpages?