Publishing and Sharing
Publish your work to a public reader page, send a private review link, set your public address, embed the work on your own site, and share it with a QR code or on social media.
When you publish, PanelWave takes a snapshot of your work and puts it on the PanelWave reader at read.panelwave.org. Readers open a normal web page, no account and no app. Edits you make afterwards stay private until you publish again.
You choose one of three targets in the Publish Work wizard:
| Target | Card in the wizard | Who can open it |
|---|---|---|
| Production | Public | Anyone with the link, at read.panelwave.org/your-team/your-work |
| Staging | Review link | Anyone you send the link to; it stays the same on every republish and you can revoke it |
| Preview | Internal preview | Only your team, inside the CMS |
Paid content is protected. On the public page, locked parts (for example panels behind a subscription or purchase rule from Monetization) are removed on the server and readers see a lock instead. Age gates are enforced in the reader. Reviewers using a review link see the full work.
Publish a work
Open the wizard
In the editor header click Publish. The preflight check runs first; fix any errors it lists (see Validation).
Pick a target
Choose Public, Review link or Internal preview, then confirm the options and publish.
Copy your link
For Public and Review link the success screen shows the reader link with Copy and Open, plus the embed code, a QR code and sharing buttons. For Internal preview it offers Open internal preview, which opens the work inside the CMS.
You can find the links later in Work Properties → Publishing. The embed code, QR code and share menu are shown there for Public only; the Review link card offers Copy, Open, Revoke & new link and Unpublish. Links are also available in the More actions menu of the work card in My Works (Open public page, Copy reader link).
Your public address
A public link looks like read.panelwave.org/{team}/{work}. Both parts are short, URL-safe names (lowercase letters, digits and hyphens).
- Team address: set it on the Team page (user menu → Team), under the team name: Public address → Edit. Owners and admins can change it; see Teams.
- Work address: set it in Work Properties → Metadata → Public address. PanelWave checks while you type whether it is free.
If you publish to Public before both are set, the wizard says so and offers Set the public address and Team settings.
You can rename an address any time. Old links keep working and forward readers to the new address, so shared links and embeds do not break.
Some names are reserved (for example admin, api, login) and cannot be used as an address.
Review links
Use Review link to get feedback before going live. Send the link to editors, testers or a publisher; they need no account.
- The link stays the same when you republish, so reviewers always see the latest staging publish.
- It is not listed anywhere and is excluded from search engines, but anyone who has the link can open it. Treat it like a password. Review links are for reviewers: there are no social sharing buttons for them, so pass the link on directly to the people who should read it.
- Revoke & new link (Work Properties → Publishing) invalidates the old link immediately and gives you a new one.
Embed the work on your site
Copy the embed code from the success screen or the Publishing tab and paste it into your page:
<iframe src="https://read.panelwave.org/your-team/your-work?embed=1" width="800" height="600"
style="border:0;max-width:100%" allow="fullscreen" loading="lazy" title="Your work title"></iframe>
Keep ?embed=1 in the link: it tells the reader it runs inside another page. The reader fills the frame, and readers open its toolbar with the PanelWave icon in the bottom-right corner. Adjust width and height to fit your layout.
What readers see
The reader at read.panelwave.org is the open-source PanelWave Player, so a published work reads the way it does in Preview:
- Cover first. Reading from the beginning opens on the work cover (Work Properties → Metadata, otherwise the cover in Extras). The cover also heads the thumbnail strip and the table of contents.
- The right page layout for the screen. In page view the reader picks the page format you authored that suits the device — the phone layout on a phone, the big-screen layout on a large display — and switches when the window is resized. Formats you have not laid out are skipped.
- Your timing. Autoplay holds each panel for the display duration you set. Readers can pick their own speed in the toolbar and go back to yours with Author.
- Thumbnails show each panel's artwork in reading order, with a title card between chapters.
- The reader's language. A work with several languages opens in the reader's browser language when the work has it (an Austrian German browser reads the German version), otherwise in the work's default language. A language picked in the toolbar is remembered on that device, and
?lang=de-DEin a link opens that language. In order:?lang=, the language picked earlier on the device, the browser languages, then the work's default language. - Lettering. Balloons set in Ames Pro render in Ames Pro on read.panelwave.org and in the CMS preview. A work you export and host yourself needs its own Ames license; without it, those balloons fall back to Comic Neue (see Balloon renderer).
QR code and social sharing
- QR code: download a PNG or SVG for posters, flyers or the back of a book. Anyone who scans it lands on the reader.
- Share menu: share to X, Facebook, Reddit or by e-mail, or Copy link. Links show a preview card with your title, description and cover image when pasted into social networks and chat apps.
Unpublish, history and rollback
Everything below is in Work Properties → Publishing.
- Unpublish takes a target offline. A public link then shows a friendly "no longer available" page. Unknown or revoked links show a "not found" page instead.
- History lists the latest 10 publishes. Restore makes that version live again for readers, so you can undo a bad publish; your editor content is not changed. Restore is only offered when the version is still stored and is not already live.
- Changes to a public page can take up to 5 minutes to reach readers who already have the page cached.
Republishing the same target replaces what readers see.