A hub has two states at the same time: the draft you work on and the version your members see. Publishing turns the draft into the live version. Templates are the other half of reuse: they let you start the next hub from a structure that already works. This article covers both.
Draft and live version
Everything you do in the editor changes the draft. Members keep seeing the published version until you publish again, so you can work on a hub over several days without anyone seeing a half-finished page.
The button in the editor header tells you where you stand:
- Publish Hub before the first publish, Update Hub after it.
- The button is disabled while there is nothing to publish, for example on a new hub without rows or when the draft matches the live version.
- A number on the button counts the elements added, removed or changed since the last publish, plus one if the number of rows changed.
Publishing needs the Publish Hub permission.
Publish or update a hub
Click Publish Hub or Update Hub. The dialog Update Hub opens.
Under Select a version to publish, the first entry is Current changes with the note A new version will be created. Below it are the older versions, numbered, with Current version on the one that is live and the date on all others.
View changes opens the list of differences, grouped into elements that were added, removed or changed and the change in the number of rows. The list only covers elements and the number of rows. If you only changed titles, layouts or the order of rows, it has nothing to show, but Publish still puts those changes live.
Under Version details you can give the version a name and a description: Version name (optional) and Version description (optional). They help you find the right version later.
Click Publish. The selected version becomes live and the version that was live until now is retired. When you publish Current changes, a fresh draft starts from the published state, so you can keep working right away.
Publishing makes the hub visible only to members who have access. If nobody is assigned, nobody sees it. Set access under Manage Access, see Creating a Hub.
Roll back to an older version
Open the publish dialog, pick an older version in Select a version to publish and click Publish. That version goes live again. Your draft stays as it is, so nothing you were working on is lost. The name and description fields are read-only for older versions. The publish button only works while your draft differs from the live version; if you have just published, make a change first, then open the dialog.
What templates are
A template is a hub structure without members, access or publish state: rows, columns and elements with their content. You choose a template in the first step of creating a hub, and its rows and elements are copied into the new hub.
There are two kinds:
- System templates come with memberarea. They carry the badge Template in the hub dialog, where you can preview and use them. They cannot be edited.
- Your own templates are listed under Hubs > Templates.
Create a template
There are two ways:
- In the hub list or in the hub editor, open the three-dot menu and choose Save as template. The dialog Create New Template opens with the hub already selected.
- On the templates page, click Add (on an empty list also New Template in the middle of the page). Enter a Title. Switch on Copy from existing hub ("Start with the structure of one of your hubs as a base.") and pick a hub in the field Hub, or leave it off to start with an empty template.
A template copies the rows and elements of the hub's current draft, not the published version. Template titles can have up to 100 characters.
Opening the templates page needs View Hub Templates. Creating templates needs Create Hub Template, changing them Update Hub Template, deleting them Delete Hub Template.
Work with templates
The three-dot menu of a template holds Preview, Edit, Use template, Duplicate and Delete.
- Edit opens the same row and element editor as a hub. Templates have no publish step: your changes are the template.
- Use template jumps to Create New Hub with the template already chosen, so you only enter the title and look.
- Duplicate copies a template and adds "(Copy)" to its name.
Changes to a template never reach hubs that were created from it. Each hub keeps its own copy.
If the list is empty, it says You don’t have any templates yet. The system templates still show up when you create a new hub.