Under the new CMS item publishing system, how do I publish a CMS item to staging only?
CMS item publishing is great, but when you click Publish Now it will always publish that item to production only.
What if you want to publish to staging only?
Prior to item publishing, you staged CMS items by doing a full-site publish to staging. You could not publish the CMS change independently.
After item publishing was introduced, you can still do the same thing, with one added step which is to queue the items for publishing, then publish to staging.
Fundamentally it's identical, though it does diminish some of the value provided by CMS item publishing. We're still faced with the old workflow problem where we can't 100% separate CMS item publishing from site publishing.
However, the current setup 2025-Jul does offer a relatively smooth path to achieve this;
- Edit the CMS item
- Queue the CMS item by clicking Queue for next site publish
- Publish the full site to staging ONLY
- Perform your script testing, SEO testing, mobile testing, client sign-offs, etc.
- Publish the CMS item with Publish now. This is available even though the item already indicates a Published state.
