Obsidian Publish is an optional [[Core plugins|core plugin]] and a paid service that lets you host your notes online to the public or to people who know the password. It is disabled by default. Obsidian Publish can host your site at a URL like `publish.obsidian.md/yourname` or you can also set it up to use a custom domain. ## Setting up Publish ### Pay for Obsidian Publish Go to [the Obsidian website](https://obsidian.md/publish) and click *Buy now*. Sync currently costs $20 a month per site or $192 per year. Sign into your Obsidian account (or sign up for one). Go through the prompts to enter your payment method. ![[Obsidian Sync#Connect your device to your account]] ### Enabling Obsidian Publish Go to Settings > Core Plugins and enable Obsidian Publish. From [[The Obsidian UI and settings#The toolbar|the toolbar]], click on the Publish icon: ![[ui-publish-icon.png]] Click *Manage sites*. Type a new *site ID* and click *Create*. A list of all the notes in your vault appears, with several sections. ![[obsidian-publish-menu.png]] From left to right, here's what the icons along the top do: - **Switch site:** If you have more than one Publish site, you can switch between them here. - **Change site options:** Here you can change how your site appears to visitors, including the name, logo displayed, passwords, and whether or not you want visitors to be able to search for notes. - **Filter:** Specify folders to include or exclude when publishing - **Contact support:** Send a message to the Obsidian developers to troubleshoot any Publish-related issues. ## Publishing your site Click on the Publish icon from the toolbar. Expand the dropdown menus in the *Changed* and *New* sections and select the notes you want to publish, or click *Select all* to select all notes within a section. At the bottom, click *Publish*. You get a message with a link to your new Publish site. ## Using frontmatter to disable publishing If you want to publish only *some* notes in your vault, you can make sure you don't select them when publishing. However, it's easy to forget what you don't want published, so instead, a safer way is to use [[YAML Frontmatter]] to exclude notes. You can do this by including the `publish` key with the value `false`: ![[YAML Frontmatter#publish]] Notes with `publish: true` are always included in the Publish dialog for selection, and notes with `publish: false` are always *excluded*, so it's a little safer than hoping you remember not to publish certain notes. ## What's not published? The following things are not visible in Publish: - [[Canvas]]es you have in your vault - [[Comments]] are not displayed, but they can still be found in the code, so don't use these to put anything private in your notes - [[YAML Frontmatter]] are not displayed, but can also be found in the code. ## 40% off for education and non-profit For students and non-profit companies, you can apply to get a 40% off your Sync and Publish subscriptions. To apply, go to [your Obsidian account page](https://obsidian.md/account), scroll down to the *Discount* section, click *Apply*, and go through the prompts. ## Related - [These course notes, on Publish](https://publish.obsidian.md/o4e) with password `concierge-napping-prorate` - [Obsidian docs on Publish](https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Publish/Introduction+to+Obsidian+Publish) - [My published notes](https://notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com)