Frequently Asked Questions About Prepublish

Answer

Prepublish allows you to check content before publishing, but it has specific limitations, requirements, and behaviors depending on how it is implemented. Common questions include supported content types, subscription requirements, API usage, plugin experiences, check results, and troubleshooting common plugin messages.

Summary

This article answers frequently asked questions about Prepublish, including how it works with PDFs, CMS plugins, APIs, Accessibility Site Targets, broken links, check result differences, plugin development, and the old versus new plugin user experiences.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I check PDFs using Prepublish?

No, PDFs can only be checked after they are published and the site has been fully crawled/scanned.

Can I install the CMS Plugin with only the Prepublish functionality?

No, to use Prepublish you must install and configure the full CMS Plugin that works with your CMS and checks against live published content on your site as well.

Even if you remediate errors before publishing, errors can still come up down the road with changes made to the site, so it can be useful to have both options available.

Can I use the API to carry out Prepublish Checks?

Yes, the “Content” endpoints in the API are strictly intended to be used for Prepublish checks (i.e., “Content Checks”).

Note: Siteimprove does not provide support or consultation services for custom API implementations.

Do I need a subscription to Prepublish?

Yes, you need a subscription to Prepublish in order to use the feature.

Contact Siteimprove if you have any questions regarding your subscription.

Does Prepublish check for broken links?

No. The Prepublish check shows the links, but does not carry out a broken link check at this time due to the issues checking broken links causes with the check performance.

Within AEM (Adobe Experience Manager), there are checks for broken links within AEM itself. Other CMS systems may have similar features available or broken links can be checked once the page is published via live page checks.

Does the Prepublish take into account the Accessibility Site Target settings?

Unfortunately, it doesn't take into account the Site Target settings at this point.

It shows all levels of issues. There currently aren't any filtering options, but this could change down the road.

Why do the check results in Prepublish differ from those in the Siteimprove platform?

If you are comparing the Prepublish checks to the checks in the Siteimprove Platform, it is important to consider the Platform as the definitive source, as it possesses the complete functionality of the checks, decisions, and filtering options like their is available.

There can be many reasons why the Prepublish check results can differ from the Platform checks.

Possible reasons include:

• The Prepublish checks utilize a separate process streamlined for Prepublish to perform checks of content, which is different from the process to perform checks in the Siteimprove platform.
• For the plugins, the Platform checks live published pages, which are crawled at a regular interval, and changes may have been made to site templates or the page within the CMS, which is checked via Prepublish, since the page was last crawled.
• The checks available in Prepublish may be different from the checks performed in the platform, as only certain checks are available or make sense to do in Prepublish and within certain integrations that utilize Prepublish.
• Decisions are only taken into account at the Siteimprove Account-level, so you may not see site-level or page-level decisions reflected that you might see reflected in the Platform check results or the CMS plugin "Live view", or "This page" tabs. For more details on this review the section Platform decisions that are shown with Prepublish checks.
• The Accessibility Site Target settings are not reflected in the plugin, so you will see results for all of the levels of issues. Within the Siteimprove Platform, certain levels of checks might be filtered out from results due to the Site Target set.

Where can I find more information on how to build a plugin with Prepublish checks?

You can reference Siteimprove CMS Plugin Integration Cookbook and the Siteimprove CMS Plugin SDK for information on how to build plugins.

Why am I seeing "No results yet, Page Not Found, or Missing Access to Page" messaging in the plugin?

This is actually expected behavior if the page is not published yet and the page has not yet been crawled in the Siteimprove platform under a site that you have access to.

This is the perfect scenario to utilize the Prepublish check feature to check the content before it goes live.

If this occurs for a page that is published and indexed in the Siteimprove platform, or is happening for all pages on the site, there may be another issue at play.

Please refer to the article CMS Plugin: Why am I getting the error message "Missing access to page"? For additional reasons, you might encounter error messages like this in the plugin and ways to resolve the issue.

How do I tell if I am using the 'old' or 'new' plugin user experience (UI/UX)?

Old plugin Experience

With the "old plugin experience," there will be "This page, Site Overview, and My history" tabs, and the plugin overlay will look like the screenshot below.

The Prepublish check is initiated from a button outside of the plugin overlay window.

Typically, a blue loading bar will appear when the Prepublish check is processing, and you will need to select the "See results" button to see the Prepublish check results.

New plugin experience

For the "new plugin experience," there will be "Live page, Prepublish view, and Unpublish risks" tabs, and the plugin overlay will look something like the screenshot below.

The "Prepublish view" tab, where the Prepublish checks are performed, should have the option, for most of the plugins, to select a button within the plugin overlay window to "Run a Content Check."

When a Prepublish check is being performed, a progress bar will appear in the plugin overlay under the "Prepublish View" tab, and when the check is complete, the results for the check will update in the "Prepublish View" tab.

Additional Information

You can learn more on the Siteimprove Prepublish page.