School website (CMS) troubleshooting

The two publish switches behind an empty public site, the SEO checks that block publishing, why a Vice Principal cannot publish, and how domain verification decides.

Getting started guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

The public school website is a genuinely separate product from the signed-in portal. It has its own content, its own publishing rules, and its own permission ladder, and it never notifies a family about anything. The two questions that resolve most tickets are whether the site as a whole is switched on, and whether the person editing is a publisher or only an editor.

Permission problem or configuration problem?

Here the two failures have distinct status codes, which makes the fork unusually easy. A 403 is permission: the account is not a publisher, or is not one of the four roles allowed into the CMS at all. A 422 is configuration: the content itself failed the SEO gate and the response names each check. A page that saves happily but stays invisible to the public is a third case and is neither - it is the site-level published flag or a schedule that has not yet arrived. Check the status code before deciding which conversation to have.

Content not appearing

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Whole public site is blank	Site configuration is not published	The site-level flag defaults to off on a new school. Switch it on at /school-website/settings.
One page missing while others show	Page is a draft or in review	Content moves through draft, in review, scheduled, and published. Only published pages, and scheduled pages whose time has passed, are public.
Staff profile absent from the directory	Per-row publish flag	Each entry at /school-website/staff is created unpublished and has to be published individually.
Enquiries seem to be going nowhere	They are stored, not emailed	Read the inbox at /school-website/enquiries. Nothing on the public site reaches the in-app notification system.

Custom domain

A custom domain is saved first and verified second, and verification is a real DNS lookup rather than a checkbox. It passes when the domain has a CNAME pointing at the configured application host, or an A record sharing an address with it. It fails with 422 and a specific detail: the domain did not resolve, the application host could not be resolved for comparison, or the records simply do not match. If the application host itself is unknown, the message says so and the fix is to set NEXTAUTH_URL or NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL to the public HTTPS address. Outside production, verification is skipped and always reports success, so a domain that verified on a staging box proves nothing.

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Every page is marked published but /myschool shows nothing. What is missing?+

There are two switches, not one. The site itself has a published flag on its configuration that defaults to off, and while it is off the public site renders nothing at all no matter how many pages are published underneath. Turn the site on under /school-website/settings first, then check individual pages.

Publishing a page is refused with 422 and a list of SEO checks. Which ones actually block?+

When a page is being published, everything except missing image alt text blocks. In practice that means a title, an SEO description between fifty and one hundred and sixty characters, and a cover image are all mandatory to publish. Saving as a draft only requires the title. The response returns each failing check by code, so fix them and save again.

Why can a Vice Principal edit website content but not publish it?+

CMS access is graded. Platform Admin, Principal, and the office Admin role are publishers and can publish, unpublish, and schedule. Vice Principal is an editor: they can write and review but any attempt to publish or schedule is refused with 403. No other role reaches the CMS at all.

Does scheduled website content need the daily cron job?+

No, unlike scheduled notices. A page saved as scheduled becomes publicly visible as soon as its scheduled time is in the past, because the public queries treat a scheduled page with a past timestamp as visible. Only a publisher may set a schedule in the first place.