Publishing Overview
Once your articles are generated and ready, iContentForge provides a flexible and robust publishing pipeline to get your content live on your connected CMS. This document explains the core publishing architecture, the different publishing methods, and how to monitor and manage the process.
Publishing Methods
You can publish your articles in three primary ways, depending on your content strategy and workflow.
1. Manual Publishing
This is the simplest method. Navigate to your project's Articles table, find an article with a status of Ready, and click the Publish button. This sends the article to your connected CMS immediately.
Manual publishing is ideal for one-off articles or when you need to review and approve content before it goes live.
2. Drip Feed (Automatic Scheduling)
Drip Feed automates your publishing schedule. When enabled for a project, iContentForge will automatically publish Ready articles from the queue at a steady interval, approximately every 5 minutes.
Drip Feed settings panel showing enable toggle and queue
Key Features:
- Set & Forget: Configure once and content publishes automatically.
- Steady Flow: Maintains a consistent content cadence without manual intervention.
- No Redis Required: Our system manages the scheduling internally, simplifying infrastructure.
To enable Drip Feed, go to your Project Settings and toggle on the Drip Feed option. Articles will be published in the order they are added to the queue.
3. Bulk Publish
Need to publish multiple articles at once? Use the Bulk Publish action. Select multiple Ready articles from the Articles table, click the Bulk Actions dropdown, and choose Publish Selected. This is useful for launching a content series or backfilling a blog.
Bulk publishing sends all selected articles to your CMS in quick succession. Ensure your CMS can handle the publishing load to avoid timeouts.
Article Publishing Statuses
An article progresses through several statuses during the publishing lifecycle. Understanding these helps you track progress and identify issues.
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Draft | Initial state after generation. Content is being written. |
| Scheduled | (Drip Feed) Article is in the automatic publishing queue. |
| Queued | Article is in line to be published (for bulk or manual actions). |
| Generating | AI is still creating the article content. |
| Ready | Article is fully generated and awaiting publishing. |
| Publishing | Article is actively being sent to the connected CMS. |
| Published | Success! The article is live on your website. |
| Error | The publishing attempt failed. Check the logs for details. |
Retry Mechanism & Error Handling
If a publish attempt fails (resulting in an Error status), iContentForge provides tools to diagnose and retry.
- Error Logs: Click on an article with an Error status to view detailed logs. This will often contain the specific error message from your CMS (e.g., "Authentication failed," "Invalid post data").
- Manual Retry: After addressing the root cause (e.g., reconnecting your CMS, fixing a template variable), you can click the Retry button on the article to attempt publishing again.
- Bulk Retry: You can also select multiple articles in an Error state and use the Bulk Actions > Retry Selected function.
Common publishing errors include invalid CMS API keys, disconnected CMS connectors, or template placeholders that couldn't be rendered. Always check the article logs first.
Viewing Publishing Logs
A complete history of all publishing activity is available for auditing and debugging.
- Navigate to your project.
- Click on the Logs tab in the main navigation.
- Here you will see a chronological list of all publish attempts, including timestamps, article titles, target CMS, and final status (Success/Error).
Publishing logs table showing history of publish attempts
The logs are the definitive source for understanding the timing and outcome of every article you've published through iContentForge.
Next Steps
- Learn how to connect your specific platform: CMS Connectors
- Configure automatic content flow: Drip Feed Settings
- Troubleshoot failed publications: Publishing Errors & Fixes