What does Unpublished Site mean?

When creating a site, site administrators may choose to publish it or save their site as a draft to keep it unpublished. If a site is published first, site administrators may choose to unpublish it to take time to develop it before giving access to site participants, or to restrict access to the site and its content when they are done using it.

While a site is unpublished, site participants such as students in course sites and members in collaboration sites:

  • Cannot access the site,
  • Cannot access any content in the site via links,
  • And do NOT receive any email notifications from the site, including emails sent to the site email address.

Site administrators always have access to their unpublished sites.

Choose how to view the steps.

Video Guide

Step-by-Step Instructions

How do I know if my site is unpublished?

If your site is unpublished, a banner displaying the text Unpublished Site will appear at the top of each page.  This banner includes a Publish Now button that you can select to publish the site and make it available to site participants.

If the Unpublished Site banner does not appear, this means that your site has already been published.

Note: You may also publish or unpublish your site from the Manage Access tab in Site Settings.

How do I unpublish my site?

If your site is currently published, but you would like to make it unavailable to site participants, you can do so at any time by following the steps below.

Note: Alternatively, you can unpublish multiple sites simultaneously.

Go to Site Settings.

Select Site Settings from the tool menu in your site.

Select the Manage Access tab.

Set the Site Status to Leave as Draft.

Under Site Status, select the option Leave as Draft - accessible only to site maintainers.

Update to save changes.

At the bottom of the page, select Update.

View Unpublished Site.

You will be returned to the Site Settings screen with the Unpublished Site banner displayed at the top of the page.

Don't forget to publish your site!

Students and site members cannot access an unpublished site and they cannot receive any email notifications from the site, including emails sent to its site email address!

When you're ready for site participants to access your site, select the Publish Now button in the Unpublished Site banner.