Advanced publish setting: dependent items
This topic explains when and why you would want to modify the advanced publish setting Dependent items, found in the Additional settings tab of your Publish dialog.
The Additional settings tab contains the Dependent items setting, which can be set to the following two options:
- Also publish or republish all items that link to items you are publishing (the default option)
- Do not publish or republish any items that link to items you are publishing
Which items can be said to link to the item or items you selected to publish? They are any content items that, in some way, depend on your selected item(s). Here are some examples of such items:
- A Component A that contains a Component link pointing to a Component B. If you publish Component B, Component A is dependent on it, as it quite literally links to Component B.
- A Page that shows any part of a Component as a static Component. Because the Page contains parts of the Component, it's dependent on the item and therefore can be said to link to that Component.
- A Page that contains an image from a Multimedia Component as a static Component, or shows a metadata field (let's say its alt text) of the Multimedia Component.
To see exactly which items will get published together with the item or items you selected, expand the Show items to publish area.
How do you decide whether to change this setting from its default?
- Select the default option (or leave it selected)
- Stick to the default if your selected item(s) have a small number of items that link to it, or if you are OK with sending out a big publish action. The reason this option is the default behavior is because it is guaranteed to preserve the consistency and integrity of your website: all content is up to date everywhere.
- Select the alternative option
- Switch to the alternative option only if you have a pressing reason to do so, that is, if you are concerned about performance issues when publishing, because the total number of items to publish is very large. Depending on what has been changed in your content, the result might be an inconsistent website, with old content in one place and updated content in another place. Let's look at the first two examples above again.