I do not understand how publishing changes works in Squarespace. Can someone explain?

I have had no trouble at all editing pages in Squarespace, but I am completely befuddled about the system for publishing those changes once they're made. In other web design software I've used you make your edits, you save those edits, you preview them, and then you click a button to publish the results, so they go "live". 

As far as I can see there's nothing like that on Squarespace. I've never seen a "publish" button or anything that would be its equivalent. On top of that, I can find nothing in the help system covering that, and I haven't found anything helpful when I Google the question either. There's obviously some basic point I'm not understanding. 

I did today manage to publish some changes to some existing events that I made, but part of me suspects that I did it through some backdoor method. I would have thought that you'd edit the event (you know, using "edit"), save those changes, and work from there. But that's a dead end. I can make and save the changes, but nothing more than that. Eventually I clicked on the three dots to the right of the event name, clicked on "Settings", and then edited what showed up in the Content box. When I saved that, it did publish automatically. But that seems unlikely to be how the site is supposed to work (you edit through "settings", not through "edit"?). 

What am I missing here? This makes no sense to me at all. 

Paul

Are you asking specifically about events or about Squarespace pages in general?

1 hour ago, TrevorRowe said:

Are you asking specifically about events or about Squarespace pages in general?

Well, it was events that I was editing. I suspect that matters, and I guess if you're asking then it must. 

So yes, events. 

Thanks, 

Paul

I can understand your confusion.

SS has a tendency to update various elements of their interface piecemeal and the interface is a bit muddled in places. So things can be slightly different across the various elements that can be edited.

@TrevorRowe touches on the two main differences in editing.

In general plain Pages, those that aren't a collection of items such as Events, you are basically publishing live. Although you can set up a manual system, if you don't want to go live with those types of pages, by making a copy, work on the copy, then later swap the copy in for the original page. It can involve a dance of changing URLs and other maintenance tasks.

Collections of items like Events usually have controls for unpublished and published states. Although collections have some generally common elements, they are all just a bit different in how they handle these tasks.

Thanks. These replies are helpful, and I think I do understand a bit better why things are like this. The system does make some sense to me now that I've read your responses, though I'm still stymied about why I had to come to a forum to get this information. I would have imagined that many users (like me) would have come to Squarespace from other systems that work the way I'm used to (and therefore would need this kind of explanation). 

I am not published yet and can't seem to figure it out.  I will try the method described by TrevorRowe.  I agree with PSmith15, this is so basic to having a web page, why does one have to search the forum for a solution.  I have been working at this for two weeks and had many discussions on the chat line and through email.  They people (and bots) staffing this don't seem to have a clue.  Wish me luck and thanks TrevorRowe for a paossible solution and PSmith 15 for letting me know I am not alone.