How your pages are built

A Willo site is built ahead of time. When the site builds, every page is turned into finished HTML, and that HTML is what visitors get. It is why the site is fast and holds up under traffic. It also explains most "why hasn't my site changed?" questions.

Data shown on a page is from the last build

A page that lists your products, blog posts or anything else from your database shows them as they were when the site last built. Changing a row in the database does not change the page. Not after a minute, and not after a refresh. The page changes when the site next builds.

There are two ways a page can show live data instead:

Ask Willo to fetch it in the visitor's browser. The page then loads the data each time someone opens it, with no rebuild. This is a change to how the page is built, so ask for it once ("make the product list load live").
Use the publishing path for that kind of content, which rebuilds for you (below).

What triggers a rebuild

You changed	How it reaches the site
A blog post or other content item	Publishing or unpublishing the item on the Content page rebuilds the site. With drafting on, it waits in the draft until you publish.
Your Shopify catalog	Willo checks your Shopify catalog about every 15 minutes and rebuilds when something changed. For an immediate update, or after deleting a product, use Rebuild site in Settings → Connections.
Anything else	A change to the site's files, which Willo makes when you ask.

There is no "redeploy" button, and rebuilding without a file change ships nothing new. If the files are right and the site is still showing something old, contact support from the ? menu.

Which files have a public address

Only two places in your site's code produce web addresses:

public/ is copied to the root of the site as it is. A file at public/guide.pdf is served at yoursite.com/guide.pdf.
src/pages/ holds the pages. Each file becomes a page at its own address.

A file anywhere else has no address. To offer a download, such as a PDF lead magnet, upload it on the Assets page, or attach it in chat and ask Willo to publish it. Either way it gets a permanent public link, ready to put on a page. Documents Willo writes for you, like a strategy brief, live in Assets → Documents and are never on the site.

The sitemap is already there

Every Willo site has a sitemap, generated on every build from the site's real pages. There is nothing to turn on. It answers at /sitemap.xml (and /sitemap-index.xml), and your robots.txt names it, so you can submit yoursite.com/sitemap.xml to Google Search Console as it is.

Sites created before September 2026 may answer only at /sitemap-index.xml. Ask Willo to add the newer setup and both addresses work.

To keep a page out of the sitemap and out of search, ask Willo to mark it noindex. Redirected pages and pages marked noindex are left out automatically.

Redirects

A redirect sends an old address to a new one with a permanent (301) redirect. Willo sets it on the host, so it takes effect without a rebuild and survives every rebuild after. Ask in chat: "redirect /old-pricing to /pricing". Setting or removing a redirect stops for your approval, because it changes the live site at once, even while drafting.

A page still at the old address wins. The redirect is saved as pending and starts working after the page is removed and published. Ask Willo to do both in one go.
Only within your own site. A redirect to another website is refused.
Redirects the Willo team set up for your site are shown but can't be changed from chat; a request that conflicts with one is refused.

Sites rebuilt from an older site

If Willo rebuilt your site from one you had before, the old site's robots.txt rules came across on purpose, so pages you had hidden from search stay hidden. If some pages aren't appearing in Google, ask Willo to check the robots rules first. It names the rule and the pages, and removes a rule only when you say so.