Locale-based publishing

What is locale-based publishing?

NOTE: Locale-based publishing is only available on Premium plan.

Locale-based publishing allows you to publish your content in a specific locale and in isolation from other locales. This gives flexibility to your editors to work independently of each other by asynchronously publishing their changes per locale.

Once you’re done with your updates and click Publish to release them, you can select one or multiple locales. The updates then go live only for those locales that you selected.

Locales publishing options

In the Locales page under Settings menu in the web app, you can select one of the following publishing options:

• Publish per entry - Allows you to publish and unpublish all locales of an entry, asset, or experience with one click.

• Locale-based (un)publishing - Allows you to publish and unpublish content in one or multiple selected locales, in isolation from other locales.

NOTE: The selected publishing option applies to all environments in the space.

Set up locale-based publishing

To set up locale-based publishing:

1. Log in to the Contentful web app.

2. Go to the Settings menu and select Locales from the drop-down list.

3. Under the Publishing options area, select Locale-based (un)publishing.

4. Click Save to apply changes.

Publish locale

To publish an entry in a specific locale:

NOTE: The same publishing flow applies to assets, experiences, and publishing in Live preview.

1. Log in to the Contentful web app.

2. Go to the Content tab.

3. Go to the required entry and click to open it. The entry editor is displayed.

4. Optional: If necessary, make edits to your entry.

5. Click Publish.

6. Select a locale (one or multiple) that you would like to publish.

7. Optional: Click Add references if you would like to publish content referenced in your entry. Select the required references.

8. Click Publish. Your entry is published in the selected locale.

NOTE: Workflow states and Tasks on a specific locale block publishing of the entire entry.

NOTE: If a fallback locale has unpublished changes, then its published content is returned to the requested locale. In case the fallback locale hasn't been published yet, the requested locale is returned. You can’t unpublish a locale which is actively used as fallback.

Default locale publishing workaround

When you publish content for the first time, it is required to publish its default locale.

If you need to avoid publishing the default locale, go through the following steps: 

1. In the Content model tab, go to the required content type(s). Update the fields by deselecting the Required checkbox under the Validation area. 

2. Publish the default locale empty. 

3. Optional: You can also add an extra field to your content type, for example Boolean field, to define which locales are valid, and use this info on your frontend.

View status per locale

You can view the status (draft, published, or changed) of a specific entry, asset, or experience per each of its locales in the following contexts:

• List view - In the Content/ Media/ Experiences tab, hover over the status of your entry, asset, or experience to view the status per locale.

NOTE: The overall status will be Changed if at least one locale is changed, and Published if at least one is published while the rest are Draft.

• Entry/asset editor sidebar - Under the LOCALES area, click Edit locales list to select locales that you would like to work with in the entry/asset editor and view their statuses.

• Experience editor - Hover over the status of the experience located near its title, to view status per locale.

Known limitations

• At first publishing, publishing of the default locale is required.

• A Scheduled publishing entry, asset, or experience, as well as a What is a release?, can't be published per locale - all of the locales have to be published at once.