UX evaluation & improvement needed for the exhibit "publish" button

[caaster]

A new, but not surprising issue has surfaced with a brand new exhibit creator. It is important to add that this person is tech savvy and he is familiar with basic web publishing platforms. Here are the details:

• I noticed that the person's exhibit had been published, yet the exhibit was far from publication-ready.
• I reached out to give them a friendly reminder that they needed to request a pre-pub review (local Stanford policy) before they were ready to publish. I let them know that I unpublished their exhibit in the meantime.
• They responded with, "Does selecting published under the email fields push the whole exhibit live [under Configuration > General > Basic settings]? I thought this was making the contact emails public. If this isn't what did it, please let me know what I did so I can avoid doing it again." -- This issue was covered during the hands-on Zoom training we provide, but this detail must have been forgotten or misunderstood.
• I responded to him that it did in fact publish the entire exhibit.
• He then responded, "It reads to me as a choice as to whether or not the emails will be public. That's why I selected the option. It's a UX flag. I'd add text that elaborates that that selection will push the exhibit live."

Although I've never received this type of feedback before, I think the exhibit creator is making a valid point.

I think this would benefit from UX review, and design suggestions for improvement that might serve to prevent this from happening in the future, and provide exhibit creator context for the "publish" button.