What is the difference between “Publish” and “Publish Order Settings”?

The day has finally come. After weeks of planning, decision making, and populating your content on your store, the time has arrived for you to publish your site live! As you already know you have many different features in your Yahoo! Store. One thing that can get a little confusing is your publishing options. There are two options commonly misunderstood. The publish option within your store editor, and the “Publish order settings” option from the control panel in your Store Manager. Is there a difference? And if so, what is it? The answer is yes! First lets look at Publishing from inside of your store editor. When you log into your store editor you will notice in your tool bar you will have a publish button as shown here:

By clicking the Publish button from here, you will be publishing your entire store. If you have added new content such as new pages, products, pictures or text this is the publishing option that you will want to go with. Now lets look at “Publish your order settings” and the options it provides. When you log into your Yahoo! Store control panel, you will see in your store manager a set of links that contain a “Publish order settings button as shown here:

This option provides you with the ability to publish your shopping cart settings only. This option makes alot of sense for several reasons. If you have a large store, with many products it can often take several hours for your entire store to publish. If you have only made changes to your Checkout settings this option is much more time efficient because your only re-publishing the settings that you have changed, instead of your entire site.

Summary

The main difference between the two publishing options is that publishing from your store editor publishes your entire store, whereas using the “Publish order settings” will only publish your shopping cart and checkout settings!