[Bug] Share > Publish is only a snapshot and doesn't update with changes to the document

[rockerest]

Describe the bug

The Share > Publish feature creates a published snapshot of the document, but does not update the shared document when the source changes.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Self-host AppFlowy Cloud (I haven't tried this on the SaaS version)
2. Ensure the root URL is publicly accessible
3. Create or visit any document
4. Click the Share button
5. Click the "Publish" tab
6. Click the Publish button
7. Visit the URL provided
8. Make changes to the source document in the AppFlowy app
9. Reload the published URL (note: it will not reflect your changes to the source document)
10. Repeat steps 4 & 5
11. Click Unpublish button
12. Click Publish button
13. Reload the published URL again (note: it will now reflect your changes to the source document)

Expected behavior

A published document is always in sync with the source document unless the provided URL is a completely unique snapshot URL. This is not preferable, but would explain why updates don't automatically get published. Since the URL is stable (not a unique snapshot), it should stay in sync.

Screenshots

This is pretty difficult to represent with screenshots.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows 11
• Browser: Firefox
• Version: Client - 0.9.3, Cloud - "Latest" (0.9.59 at this time)

Additional context

I upgraded to 0.9.59 specifically to ensure I was on the latest version and could still replicate the problem and I now get hard crashes to desktop in the client at random times (typing, opening a card in a table board layout, etc.). It's very frequent, but I was still able to - with difficulty - verify this problem still exists on the latest version.

[khorshuheng]

For the published document - unfortunately that is by design. The reason is, when we design this feature, we anticipate that a user might not want to publish their document until it is ready. We do see users complaining about this, and we are still brainstorming on what is the best way to cater for such use case.

[alghostzx]

Might I suggest an "unpublished changes" indicator, and a prompt to publish changes if there are any when leaving the document?

[julianengel]

Hi @khorshuheng, hoping in here - we migrated our entire stack to Appflowy (thank you, amazing tool) but today had this exact thing happen.

Step 1: Publish site, send link Step 2: Printshop opened it, and looked at it Step 3: We changed some things and asked them to refresh Step 4: They did, and sent the entire print run off, without the changes

There was no "unpublished changes" indicator, or even a notice that changes won't reflect automatically, we expected the same behavior as Notion (from whom we migrated).

Their docs for reference:

Any changes made to the Notion page will automatically reflect on the public version, ensuring the content is always up-to-date.

I'd say it is safe to assume that the default assumption of most users is that publish will by default update the site.

Possible solutions:

-) Update by default

or

-) Add a "re-sync" button or Publish Changes button - un-publishing and re-publishing is not intuive -) add a notification that changes are not synced and visual ID of from what moment

As it's now, it can lead to big issues (and costly reprints). Just for clarity, that one is 100% on me for not having checked and just assumed :'