When a site change doesn't show

When a change isn't showing, the cause is almost always one of the first four checks below, and almost never your browser's cache. Work through them in order.

1. Are you looking at the right copy?

With drafting on, changes go to the draft. Switch the preview on the Site page to Draft to see it. Your site's own address shows the live site, which changes only when you publish.

Change in the preview but not on your address: it is waiting to be published. See Publish a draft.
Drafting off: there is no draft, and a saved change rebuilds the live site.

2. Has the rebuild finished?

A change reaches the site through a rebuild that usually takes two to five minutes. While it runs, the preview is blurred. Ask Willo: "check my deploy status". It says whether the last rebuild succeeded, failed or is still running.

A rebuild that succeeded means the site's files built and shipped. It doesn't by itself prove your change is in them, which is the next check.

3. Did the change land on the right page?

Pages in a site's code don't always map to addresses the way you'd guess. A change can land in a file that renders a different page, or a section that isn't used. Ask Willo: "which file renders /about, and is my change in it?" It looks up the file that actually serves that address and reads it. If the change is somewhere else, ask it to move the change.

4. Is it data from your database?

Your pages are built ahead of time. A product, price or listing you changed in the database shows on the page only after the site next rebuilds. If it needs to change without a rebuild, ask Willo to load it in the visitor's browser instead.

Content items, like blog posts, reach the site when you publish them on the Content page (with drafting on, after you also publish the draft). 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.

5. Only then: your browser

If the steps above all check out, open the page in a private window. If it is right there, your browser had an old copy. This is rare; if the change is missing in a private window too, go back to step 2.

Don't try to force it

There is no redeploy button, and rebuilding with no file change ships nothing new. Asking Willo for a tiny edit "to kick a build" won't fix a change that landed in the wrong place. If the files are right and the live site is still out of date, contact support from the ? menu.

A file you expected at an address

Only files in the site's public/ folder, and pages in src/pages/, have web addresses. A file anywhere else returns "not found". To share a download, upload it on the Assets page.

The sitemap returns "not found"

Every site has a sitemap. On sites created before September 2026 it answers at /sitemap-index.xml rather than /sitemap.xml. Ask Willo to add the newer setup if you want both.