Problem:
Since a recent Webflow update, editing a CMS item or a static page automatically sets it to “Draft”, making the previously published version immediately unavailable. WIHOUT publishing anything. This is a major issue because:
Live content disappears the moment you edit it – Instead of keeping the last published version online, it is instantly removed.
Unintentional unpublishing – If a user edits something but doesn’t publish immediately, that content is no longer available.
No way to work on a draft while keeping the published version live – This disrupts workflows for teams preparing content in advance.
No option to turn this off – There’s no setting to disable this behavior, leaving users with no control.
What Webflow should fix:
Keep the last published version online until the new version is explicitly published.
Allow users to disable auto-draft in project settings.
Provide a clear warning or confirmation before moving an item to draft.
This feature was not an issue before and is causing major frustrations. Does anyone else find this disruptive? Is Webflow addressing this?
The core problem is that OCE gives excellent editing capabilities to a page, but the new CMS item draft changes feature competes with it.
On a collection page-
Edits made to CMS-bound elements currently change the CMS item to a Draft Changes state, which Publish Site does not pick up. However, you can see the Draft Changes state at the top-center of the designer, and click publish now.
Edits made to CMS-bound collection list content also push those items to Draft Changes, but there is no indication of that, and no way to Publish Now or Queue Changes those items from the OCE. It’s also difficult to find them in the CMS view, since you cannot sort on the item state column. On a Site Publish, these items weirdly disappear from the collection list.
Edits made to static elements require a Site Publish, but there’s no indication to the user that there are unpublished changes.
The end result is that is that you can easily make changes to update your content- but what you see in the designer is not what will publish when you Publish the site.
Instead, you generally need to publish between 2 and 100 things separately depending on what you’ve edited. Most of my Collection pages also contain collection lists, so this is a massive issue for our clients.
It’s well worth filing a message to support if this affects you as well.