Learn how to publish variations to production and unpublish them by changing their status.
New variations are saved in a draft state. Both draft and paused variations need to be set to a Ready state before they are included in the changes that go live when you publish your site. If you need to edit a launched variation, pause it first so that unwanted changes are not inadvertently shown to visitors. You can archive underperforming or unwanted variations once they're paused.
How to launch a draft variation to production
Draft variations need to be marked as Ready to be included in the changes that go live when you next publish your site.
Open the optimization in edit mode, then:
- Click the Optimizations dropdown in the top bar
- Click Launch all variations now > Publish later to mark all drafts as ready
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Publish your site to launch the variations marked as Ready
Good to know
You can mark an individual draft as ready by mousing over the variation and clicking: Options icon > Ready to launch > Mark as ready (not applicable in traditional test optimizations).
How to pause a live variation
Note
You can pause variations in manual personalization optimizations and AI-optimized optimizations. It's not possible to pause variations in a traditional test optimization — instead, you can end the test.
Pausing a live variation instantly unpublishes it from production — no additional "Publish" action is required.
To pause a live variation:
- Go to the Insights tab
- Click All optimizations
- Choose the optimization that contains the variation
- Mouse over a variation, then click the Pause icon
How to relaunch a paused variation
When you're ready for a paused variation to go live again, you can relaunch it. If you did not edit the variation, relaunching it will instantly push the variation live to your site. If you edited the variation, publish your site after relaunching the variation.
To relaunch a paused variation:
- Go to the Insights tab
- Click All optimizations
- Choose the optimization that contains the variation you want to pause
- Click Status > Paused to show/hide paused variations
- Mouse over a paused variation, then click the Relaunch icon
How to archive a paused variation
If you have no plans to relaunch a paused variation (e.g., it's a poor performer), you can archive the variation.
To archive a paused variation:
- Go to the Insights tab
- Click All optimizations
- Choose the optimization that contains the variation you want to archive
- Click Status > Paused to show/hide paused variations
- Mouse over a paused variation, then click the Archive icon
