Chapter 5 · about 10 minutes
Your first page, and Publish changes
Everything in Comet's editor can be worked out by clicking around, with one exception. This chapter teaches the exception first, because it is the thing people get wrong, and it is the difference between a live website and a website only you can see.
The one idea: each page has a switch, the site has a button
One switch on every page
Every page has a small pill in the Pages list — Visible or Hidden. Click it to flip it. Visible means visitors may see the page; Hidden means only people signed in to the editor can. A new page starts Hidden, so you can write it in peace.
Everything you type is saved as you go. There is no Save button, and nothing is ever lost.
One button for the whole site
At the top right there is one button, and it is about changes. When you have changed something since the last publish it says Publish changes, with a small note beside it saying what — 2 pages · design. Press it and the public copy of your site is rewritten. When there is nothing to publish it says Published with a tick, and does nothing; hover it to see when the site was last published and by whom.
Said the blunt way
Flipping a page to Visible does not put it on the internet by itself. The button does. If it says Publish changes, your change is not on the public site yet — however perfect it looks on your screen. Nine out of ten “my site is not updating” problems are this.
It cuts the other way too, and that is the point: you can rewrite your whole homepage over a fortnight of lunch breaks and nobody sees a half-finished page.
The two doors, in one sentence. On a normal web host the public copy of your site is plain HTML written to disk when you publish — fast, readable by search engines, and what a shared link shows a picture for — and visitors get that copy until you publish again; on a host with no PHP there is no copy to write, so the button is replaced by a sentence saying so and visible pages update the moment you edit them. The editor tells you which kind of host you are on: if you see the button, you have the first kind.
Writing the page
Create the page and give it an address
Press New page. You are asked for two things:
- Title — what it is called, for example About us.
- Address — the last part of the web address, for example
about, givingexample.com/comet/about. Comet suggests one from the title. Keep it short, lower case, with hyphens instead of spaces.
Choose the address once
Changing a page's address later breaks every link anyone has already shared or bookmarked, and loses whatever standing it had in Google. Take five seconds over it now.
The new page starts Hidden. Leave it that way until it is ready.
Add blocks
A page is a stack of full-width blocks, one under another, like a pile of bricks. You add a block, fill it in, and add the next. The kinds you will use most:
| Block | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Text | Words. Headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes. Most of a normal site is this one. |
| Hero | The big opening statement at the top of a page: a headline, a line of text, a button. |
| Image | One picture, with an optional caption. |
| Image and text | A picture beside a paragraph. The classic “who we are” band. |
| Cards | Two to four boxes side by side. Services, team members, opening times. |
| Gallery | Several pictures as a grid, or as a swipeable carousel — the carousel is a setting on this block, not a separate one. |
| Call to action | One sentence and one button. “Book a class”, “Get in touch”. |
| Accordion | Questions that open when clicked. Perfect for FAQs and opening hours. |
| Video | Paste a YouTube or Vimeo address and Comet embeds it properly. |
| Divider | A line or a gap between sections. |
Every block has the same Style settings, so once you have learned one block you have learned them all: background (which of your palette's shades sits behind it), space above and below, and an optional link name so you can point a menu item straight at that part of the page.
There is no colour picker on a block, and that is deliberate
Blocks take their colours from your palette. It is why a Comet site still looks like one site after you have added forty pages, and why changing your brand colour in chapter 4 changes the whole site at once instead of forty pages one at a time.
Check it on a phone
Use the Phone button at the top of the editor (beside Tablet and Desktop). You are looking, not editing: Comet works out the phone layout for you, and there is no separate mobile version to keep in step. If something looks cramped, the fix is usually fewer words or fewer cards, not a setting.
Fill in the page's search and sharing details
Each page has its own small set of fields, separate from the site-wide ones in chapter 4:
- Search title — the blue line in a Google result for this page.
- Search description — the grey sentence underneath it.
- Sharing image — the picture that appears when the page's link is posted on social media or in a chat. Landscape works best.
Leave them blank and Comet falls back to the page title and your site description, which is fine. Filling them in is ten minutes well spent on the two or three pages that matter. A page you want people to reach only by its link can be kept out of search results with the switch underneath; the list then marks it Not in search results.
Add the page to your menu
Creating a page does not put it in the navigation — some pages, like a thank-you page, should not be there. Open the menu settings and add it where you want it.
Flip the page to Visible, then press Publish changes
Two clicks. In the Pages list, click the page's pill so it reads Visible. The button at the top right now says Publish changes, and the note beside it counts your page. Press it. While it works it says Publishing…; when it is done a message says Published. The public site now shows these changes. and the button goes back to Published with a tick.
Publishing is for the whole site, not one page: one press puts everything you have changed since the last time on the public site. Hover the note beside the button to see which pages that is.
Watch the result of the publish
Publishing writes files to your web host, so it is a job that can fail — a full disk, a folder permission, a host that took too long. Comet tells you if it did: a red message beginning Not published. The public site still shows the previous version, with the reason, and the site settings say Last publish did not complete — publish again. Fix the cause and press the button again. Do not walk away from a failed publish assuming it will sort itself out.
Check — and this is the real one
Open a private or incognito window — one where you are not signed in — and
go to your page's address, for example https://example.com/comet/about. Your
page is there, with your colours and your logo, and the browser tab shows your page title.
This is the only test that counts, because a private window sees your site exactly as a stranger does. If the page is missing or looks like the old version, the fix is almost always to publish again and re-check; if the message on screen is something else, find its exact words in Something went wrong → chapter 5.
From here on
- The rhythm is always the same: edit → look at the page in the editor → Publish changes → check in a private window. View live site ↗ at the top of the editor opens the page exactly as a visitor gets it.
- Publish whenever you finish a thought. There is no cost to publishing often, and a change you leave unpublished is a change you will forget to release. The button will keep saying so until you do.
- Hide a page to take it off the site. Flip its pill to Hidden and publish; the note beside the button says 1 page removed before you press.
- Share the work, not your login. Add colleagues as editors from the settings screen instead of handing over your recovery code.
- If the site sleeps after a quiet week, the first visit takes a few seconds to wake it. Normal — see chapter 3.
That is the whole product. Five chapters, two codes to keep safe, one switch on every page, and one button that makes things real.