Saving your work

This is the single most important thing to know before you edit anything. Treat editing on Payload the same way you'd treat posting a tweet from your company account — once it's saved, it's out there.

Preview first, save second

Every editable page and global in Payload has a live preview built in. This is your safety net.

1. Open the page or global you want to edit.
2. Make your changes in the form on the left.
3. Look at the preview pane on the right — it updates as you type.
4. If there's no preview pane visible, click the Preview icon near the top of the screen to open one.

The preview shows the current state of your edits before you save. You can tweak wording, swap images, and experiment freely — nothing is live until you click Save.

Sharing a preview for sign-off

If you need someone else to approve a change before it goes live, take a screenshot of the preview and share it. Don't save-then-ask — customers will see it in the meantime.

(A proper share-preview-link feature isn't built at the moment. If this is something you need often, raise it with your Flowtech account manager — we're tracking demand.)

Saving

When you're happy with the preview, click Save (top-right). The change is live within a few seconds. Refresh the public site in a separate browser tab to confirm.

What saving does behind the scenes

1. Your change is written to the database.
2. The affected pages on the public site have their cache cleared automatically.
3. Visitors see the new version the next time they load the page.

You don't need to do anything else.

Recovering a previous version

Payload keeps a version history even though there's no draft workflow. If you save something and then realise it's wrong:

1. Open the page or global you just saved.
2. Click the Versions tab (along the top, next to the main form).
3. You'll see a list of past versions with timestamps and the user who made each change.
4. Click a version to open it.
5. Click Restore to set it as the current version.
6. Click Save on the restored version to make it live again.

The previous (broken) version is preserved in the history — you can always roll forward again if you change your mind.

A sensible routine

1. Make your change.
2. Check the live preview.
3. Check on both desktop and mobile widths if layout matters.
4. Save.
5. Open the public site in a separate tab and refresh to confirm.
6. If anything's wrong, restore the previous version from the Versions tab.

What about scheduled changes?

Scheduled publishing isn't built in. If you need a change to go live at a specific time (for example, a sale banner at midnight), you'll need to be at your computer to click Save. If this is a recurring need, let your Flowtech account manager know.