# Update and promote

Every publish is two actions. Update builds; Promote publishes. They are separate so that you always get to look at the site before the public does.

This is also why a Confluence edit never reaches the live site on its own.

---

## Update

Builds the whole site and uploads it to a private staging preview. Progress runs Queued, Preparing, Processing N of M pages, Finalizing, Complete.

![Site overview for Capable Help Center with a Preview Ready badge and a staging address, and a Deployment card showing a staging row with a Promote button and a production row reading Not published yet](https://help.gocapable.com/images/de207a9d-3d3a-4eb2-b487-89a2d4e42100.webp)

After an update the staging preview is ready to review while production is still empty, so nothing is public yet.

* The staging address carries a random token, and a new token is minted every deploy, so old preview links stop working.
* Staging always ships a disallow-all robots.txt, so search engines never index a preview.
* The preview is kept for 90 days, with a warning from 14 days out.
* The live address is not touched.

---

## Promote

Copies every staging file onto production. It confirms first, naming the live address.

* Any live file the new build does not contain is deleted.
* Sitemaps are rewritten to the live address, or to your custom domain.
* The disallow-all robots.txt is replaced with a permissive one.
* The CDN cache is cleared.

⚠️

**Promote copies the build you already previewed.** It does not rebuild. If you changed Confluence since the Update, promote the old build or run Update again first.

---

## Keeping track

The Overview panel tells you where you stand: "N pages changed since last deployment", a link to review the changed pages, and either "Preview matches Confluence" or "Preview is N changes behind Confluence".

![Sites panel showing a banner reading Building staging preview, please wait, and a progress card reading Processing 36 of 400 pages with Preparing, Processing 9 percent and Finalizing stages and a Canc](https://help.gocapable.com/images/7803b405-0e46-4057-887d-126f7b683b56.webp)

A running build reports the stage it has reached and how many pages it has processed, and can be cancelled part way.

---

## A few things worth knowing

* A staging preview that expires cannot be promoted. Rebuild with Update.
* Deploys are capped at 12 per hour per site and 12 per tenant, and an export counts against that.
* Only one deploy can run per site at a time.

---

## Related

[Exporting instead of publishingA zip rather than a site.](https://help.gocapable.com/sites/exporting-instead-of-publishing.html)

[Taking a site downOffline, or deleted.](https://help.gocapable.com/sites/taking-a-site-down.html)

---

_Update builds. Promote publishes. Neither happens by itself._