Who updates the website? A practical draft, review and publishing workflow
The new product photos are ready, its technical description is buried in sales messages, and the English copy is in another file. Everyone expects the website to be updated, but nobody knows who gave final approval. The decision here is not which CMS to buy. It is who prepares a change and what makes that change ready to publish. The cover presents an original three-stage workflow for a small business.
Assign an owner to each content type
List what changes: product dimensions, project photographs, service scope, opening hours or articles. For each type, choose someone able to confirm the information. An agency can edit the wording, but the business must confirm whether a material is still supplied. Replace “marketing will handle it” with a named responsibility and an available backup person. This is useful even when several people contribute to the same page.
Record the old value, new value, source and effective date. A change in opening hours might affect both the contact page and a branch card. Include the affected pages in the request, so the final check can find information that remains out of date elsewhere. A small change becomes easier to review when its boundaries are visible.
Separate writing from publishing permissions
WordPress documents a Contributor role that can prepare its own posts but cannot publish them, while an Editor can publish and manage other users’ posts. This is a concrete example of separating content work from wider administration. Check the actual permissions in your chosen system: a role with a similar name may have a different scope.
A two-person business may not need a long approval chain. Distinguishing the writer from the information owner is often a useful starting point. If one person performs both jobs, separate the steps in time: prepare the draft, review the preview, then publish. Review old accounts when people leave or responsibilities change rather than sharing one login as the team grows.
Approve the page preview, not just a document
Reading copy in a separate file will not show a heading wrapping on a phone, an incorrect destination, or an English illustration left on a Turkish page. Record the preview address, language and version being approved. A short “looks good” message is useful only when everyone can identify what it referred to.
Use three questions: Is the information correct? Can readers find the explanation they need? Does the next link work? Our staging-access guide covers preview access separately. An editorial approval process does not, by itself, confirm that the system’s security settings have been reviewed or that every workflow has passed testing.
Open a sample publishing card
Leave a live check and a recovery point
After publication, open the live address and read the changed area again. Preserve the previous copy and image so a mistaken update can be reversed. A simple record can contain the change, reviewer, live URL and check date. This is an internal maintenance record, rather than a badge visitors need to see.
After the first month, review stalled items. Is the missing input a photograph, technical approval or translation? Add the necessary training and maintenance responsibilities to the website handover scope. Even image-led pages such as our Erhan Mobilya project presentation need ownership of descriptions and image labels. This sample workflow does not describe that client’s internal processes.
Frequently asked questions
Must every update go through the agency?
Routine content changes can often stay with the business. Agree which changes affect design or functionality and therefore need additional help.
Should we update content every day?
No. Work from real information changes and maintenance capacity. Reposting unchanged content merely to display a recent date is not a useful workflow.