Drafts and scheduling

Drafts

Add draft: true to a page's front matter:

---
title: Summer menu
draft: true
---

• hotdog-cms serve still shows it, so you can work on it and look at it.
• hotdog-cms build, check and publish leave it out, so it never reaches your live site.

When it's ready, delete the line (or change it to draft: false) and publish.

In the editor, drafts work differently and more simply: everything you save goes onto a draft (a branch) until you publish it. See Review and publish.

Scheduling a page

To have a page appear on its own at a set time, give it publish_at:

---
title: Summer menu
publish_at: 2026-06-01 07:00
---

The time is in your site's time zone (timezone: in site.yaml). Until then, builds for the live site leave the page out; after it, they include it.

The site has to be rebuilt after that time for the page to appear. That happens by itself if:

• your server runs the pull agent, which rebuilds when a scheduled page is due; or
• you publish through your platform's pipeline, using the file hotdog-cms ci writes, which rebuilds every hour.

If you publish by hand, publish again after the time.

Banners that come down by themselves

A banner across the top of the site (a closure, holiday hours) can have its own start and end times, and comes down on its own. See Quick posts.