Creating Releases
A release is a container for a group of content changes. You might create a release for a seasonal campaign, a pricing update, or any coordinated set of changes you want to preview and deploy together.
Creating a new release
- In the MageDrop dashboard, navigate to Releases.
- Click Create Release.
- Fill in the release details:
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | A descriptive name for the release (e.g. "Summer Sale 2026", "Homepage Redesign", "Black Friday Pricing"). |
| Description | No | Optional notes about the release. Useful for communicating the scope of changes to your team. |
| Scheduled Start | No | Optionally set a date and time for the release to deploy automatically. Leave blank to deploy manually. |
| Scheduled End | No | Optionally set an end date. When reached, the release will automatically roll back. Only available if a start date is set. |
- Click Create Release.
Your release is now created in Draft status. Nothing has been deployed — you can take your time staging changes, previewing them, and adjusting things before anything goes live.
Release statuses
Every release moves through a lifecycle. Understanding the statuses helps you know where things stand at a glance.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | The release has been created but not deployed or scheduled. You can freely add, remove, and modify staged changes. This is where you do all your preparation work. |
| Scheduled | The release has a future deploy date set. When the scheduled time arrives, MageDrop will automatically deploy it. You can still modify staged changes or cancel the schedule. |
| Live | The release has been deployed to your Magento store. All staged changes are now live on the frontend. You can roll back from this state. |
| Rolled Back | The release was live but has been rolled back. All changes have been reverted to their original values (captured at deploy time). The release remains in this state for your records. |
| Failed | The deployment or rollback encountered an error. Check the release's activity log for details on what went wrong. You can retry the deploy or manually fix the issue. |
Working with draft releases
While a release is in Draft status, you have full flexibility:
- Stage changes — use Save & Stage from the MageDrop button in Magento admin to add content changes.
- Remove changes — remove individual staged items from the release in the dashboard.
- Preview — generate a preview link to see all staged changes on the frontend.
- Edit details — update the release name, description, or schedule at any time.
- Delete — delete a draft release entirely if you no longer need it. Staged changes are discarded (nothing was deployed, so nothing needs rolling back).
Tips
- Use descriptive names. When you have multiple releases, clear names make it easy to find the right one in both the dashboard and the Magento admin dropdown.
- One concern per release. Keep releases focused — a "Summer Sale" release for pricing changes and a "Homepage Refresh" release for content changes. This makes previewing, deploying, and rolling back more predictable.
- Don't rush to schedule. You can always set a schedule later, or deploy manually when you're ready. There's no penalty for leaving a release in Draft.