Internal links on Publish site break when note is updated and re-published

The first time I publish a note on a brand new Publish site, everything works fine. But if I make changes to a note and re-publish it, the internal links (and hover previews) get messed up. They seem to point to a nearby location, but not the precisely correct location. For example:

The only way I’ve found to fix this is to delete the Publish site entirely, re-create the site, and then re-publish everything from scratch.

How that link is supposed to look:

Does it not fix itself after a while? I think this happens due to the link resolution being cached slightly differently than the file itself, causing the location be be computed wrongly, but if you clear your browser cache (or wait long enough) it should be updated correctly. Let me know if this isn’t the case and I can investigate more - DM me your site link as well so I can check it out.

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That’s possible. If the links are cached differently, I may never have waited long enough for them to fix themselves. I will do a test later tonight and post the results.

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So, I have published several times since this post, and the link issue has not happened again. The links seem to now be updating at the same time the content does. Not sure if you changed anything, but the behavior is different now than before.

On average, I’d say it takes 30-60 minutes for the content to refresh. I love the platform and hope this gets improved. The delay is rough because I can’t quickly publish, proofread, and send a link to people who are waiting for an update. I have to publish, then check back in an hour later. Every publishing platform I know of has instantaneous updates, so I hope this feature comes to Obsidian soon. Make all Publish changes happen immediately

Thanks for the good work.

It should be around 10 minutes and I think you can speed up by forcing your browser to clear the cache.

Why do you need to to proofread on publish? Isn’t it the same as in Obsidian?

Testing w/ hard refreshes, it’s still typically taking anywhere from 15-60min to go live. Seems to vary a lot.

Why do I need to proofread?

  • I want to be able to send out a reliably working link to my audience as soon as I publish an update. An indeterminate delay is not good - I cannot think of any professional publishing platforms which have anything like that. Publishers need to control when their content goes live.
  • I have been in publishing for over a decade, and it is nearly a ubiquitous practice (at least among careful writers) to double check content once it’s live. You inevitably end up finding errors you didn’t see before, just by viewing it in a new context (this is documented in psychological research etc).

So there are lots of reasons.

I would just point out, again, that this is totally standard and expected functionality in every online publishing platform I’ve ever seen or heard of. I am sympathetic to the fact that it’s competing for limited development time with many other important features (and because I like Obsidian a lot in other regards), but I admit that I’m surprised that it is controversial in any way.

I understand the need for proofreading. What I don’t get is why you can’t proofread in Obsidian before publishing.

In addition to that, the delay means that if I find a mistake and correct it, then it is another 15-60 min before the mistake is fixed on the live site.

Literally every blog platform, every CMS ever, has instantaneous updates. You may not personally understand why a person would value proofreading the live site, but I can promise you that 95-99% of online publishers do the same. It’s just the way it is.