# Sites

A published policy that says nothing about who checked it is just a web page. If you publish Confluence content as a website with Capable Sites, approval state can travel with it, so a visitor can see the page was reviewed and signed off without having any access to Confluence at all.

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## How it looks on a published site

Put [the approval macro](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/the-approval-macro.html) on a page and it renders on the published site, in whichever view mode you chose.

![image-20260905-061707.png](https://help.gocapable.com/images/6c605426-fba7-407b-b8c3-5a34e564a4af.webp)

| **View mode** | **Gives you**                                                     |
| ------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Banner**    | A visible approved-on strip at the top of a policy.               |
| **Metadata**  | A quieter line of detail, for pages where the banner would shout. |

ℹ️

It is a **static snapshot** of the approval as it stood when the site was built, not a live control. Nobody can approve anything from your public website, and the event history is never published. See [Who can see what](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/who-can-see-what.html).

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## Approval state stays fresh

Normally Sites only rebuilds a page when the page itself changes. Approval is the exception: if a page is approved after it was last published, the page is rebuilt anyway so the published version shows the new state.

So a page approved this morning shows as approved on your site after the next deploy, even though nobody edited a word of it.

| **What changed**                       | **Rebuilt** |
| -------------------------------------- | ----------- |
| The page content                       | YES         |
| The approval, with no edit to the page | YES         |

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## Publishing only what has been approved

Three jobs that sound similar and are not. Pick the one you actually want.

| **You want**                                  | **Use**                                                                                                                                                     |
| --------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Readers to see that a page is approved        | The approval macro on the page, covered here.                                                                                                               |
| A page to go live automatically once approved | [Publishing](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/publishing.html), using publish on approval. |
| Unapproved pages kept off the site entirely   | Sites page exclusions, driven by approval state.                                                                                                            |

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## A few things that catch people out

* Dates in the published snapshot render in **UTC**, because a static page has no reader to ask about time zones.
* The state your visitors see is as of the last deploy, not this second.
* An expired approval is published as expired. If that is not a message you want on a public page, keep the expiring page off the site. See [Expiry and re-approval](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/expiry-and-re-approval.html).
* A Capable Sites export is the way to get approval evidence into a document, because [the Confluence PDF export shows nothing](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/compliance.html).

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## Related

[PublishingPublishing a page the moment it is approved.](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/publishing.html)

[The approval macroThe view modes and what each one shows.](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/the-approval-macro.html)

[Who can see whatWhat a signed-out reader can see.](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/who-can-see-what.html)

[Expiry and re-approvalWhy an expired page still says so.](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/expiry-and-re-approval.html)

[ComplianceGetting evidence into an exported document.](https://help.gocapable.com/approval/compliance.html)

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_Your readers can see it was checked, without seeing who checked it._