Publish, schedule, and status

Every product has a status that decides whether shoppers can see it. Getting this right is the difference between a product that sells and one that’s hidden — so it’s worth knowing the three states and the quick ways to move between them.

The three statuses

• Active — published and visible on your storefront. Only Active products show to shoppers.
• Draft — a work in progress. Saved in your admin but not on the storefront.
• Archived — retired from your active catalog without being deleted. Keeps its data so you can restore it later.

In the Products list, each row’s status shows as a labelled dot — a colored Active, Draft, or Archived badge — and the tabs across the top let you view each state with a live count.

Set status on the product

Open a product and find the Status control in its Organization section, alongside tags, category, and tax class. Choose Draft, Active, or Archived, then Save changes. As the form notes, only Active products show on the storefront.

Note

The Organization section sits below the General details shown above, so you may need to scroll the edit form to reach the Status field. Follow the labels in your admin.

Quick ways to change status

You don’t always need to open the editor:

• From the row — the status badge in the list is a quick toggle, and the row’s ⋯ menu offers Activate, Set to draft, Archive, and Restore.
• In bulk — select several products and use Activate, Draft, or Archive in the action bar. See Bulk-edit products.

Schedule a go-live

You can line a product up to publish itself at a future time — perfect for a launch or a sale that should start overnight. While a product is a Draft, its Publishing panel lets you pick a go-live time; at that moment the product flips to Active on its own. You can Reschedule or Clear a pending time, and the panel shows when the product is scheduled to go live.

Overview

The scheduling panel appears only while a product is a draft (an Active product needs no schedule), and its exact layout isn’t shown in a screenshot here — follow the Publishing panel on the product’s Details tab. Set the product back to draft first if you want to schedule it.

Tip

Scheduling only controls when a draft becomes active. The rest of the product — media, variants, price — should be finished before the go-live time, since it all becomes visible the moment the product publishes.

Caution

A product with a future scheduled date stays a draft until that time, so it won’t appear on your storefront yet. If a product you expected to be live is missing, check that it’s Active and not waiting on a schedule — see A product isn’t showing on my storefront.