# Publishing & Sharing Source: https://docs.skaz.io/guide/publishing > Publish and share a Skaz story: the link, embedding on your site, 18+ and sign-in gates, and showing players how others chose. A story only becomes visible to other players once you **publish** it. Before that, it's private to you. ## Publish status In the top-left corner of the editor, you'll see a badge showing your story's current status: - **Not published** — only you can see this story. - **Published** — anyone with the link can play it. Click the badge to open the publish panel. ## The publish panel The publish panel shows a preview of your story (cover, title, description) along with its current status. - If your story is **not published**, you'll see a **Publish story** button. - If your story is **published**, you'll see: - **Copy link** — copies the story's shareable link to your clipboard. - **Run story** — opens the story in a new tab, exactly as a player would see it. - **Hide story** — unpublishes the story again, making it private. > The shareable link looks like `https://skaz.io/story/`. Anyone > with this link can play your story without needing an account. ## Before you publish Make sure your story: - Has a **starting block** set (see [Editor Basics](/guide/editor-basics#node-inspector) — select a block and click **Set as start**). - Has a **title, description, and cover image** set in the **Story** tab — these are shown to players before they start. - Reaches at least one ending — a block with no choices shows players a "The End" screen. - **Plays cleanly from start to finish.** [Preview](/guide/previewing) it first and walk every branch — that's how you catch a dead end, a [Variable Router](/guide/blocks#variable-router) with no matching condition, or an ending you can't actually reach *before* readers do. ## Embedding Your story doesn't have to live on a page of its own. The story's dashboard has an **Embed** card with a ready-made snippet: ```html ``` Paste it into your own site or blog and the story plays right there. Adjust the height to taste; the story scrolls inside its own frame. > Testing from a plain `.html` file on your desktop works, but serving the test > page over `http` is closer to the real thing — `python3 -m http.server` in the > folder is enough. > Stories that require signing in can't be embedded — a sign-in doesn't work > inside a frame on someone else's domain. Use a [custom > domain](/guide/custom-domain) or the plain link for those. ## How others chose On the story's page in Studio, the **Player experience** card has a switch: **Show players how others chose**. It's off until you turn it on, and takes effect immediately — no need to republish. With it on, players see: - **After each decision**, for a moment: what share of players made the same call, with a bar for every option. Only at forks with two or more choices; never on a [wheel of fortune](/guide/blocks#wheel-of-fortune), where chance decides, not players. - **At the end**: how many players found the same ending — "Only 8% of players found this ending" is a strong reason to play again. > Numbers appear once a fork or an ending has been reached at least 5 times, so > the first players don't see a meaningless "100% chose this". Only totals are > shown — nobody sees what a particular person chose. ## Branding On Free and Creator, the player carries a small **Made with Skaz** badge, a **Make your own** button at the end, and "Skaz" in the tab title. On **Studio** and **Team** it carries none of that: no badge, no invitation, no Skaz in the title or the intro — just your story. There's nothing to switch on; it follows the plan of whoever owns the story, on the regular link, a [custom domain](/guide/custom-domain) and embeds alike. > The **Content rules** and **Report this story** links stay on every plan — they're > how readers flag abuse, not branding. ## After you publish Once your story is live, its [dashboard](/guide/tracking-plays) shows who's playing right now and who's finished, so you can see how readers move through it — and spot where they get stuck. You can **Hide story** at any time to pull it back to private, make edits, and publish again. > The story intro screen notes that Skaz is in beta, and the player carries a > small **Made with Skaz** badge linking back to skaz.io — that badge is how new > authors find us, and it is on every published story. > Publishing puts your story in front of other people, so it has to follow the > [content rules](https://skaz.io/rules). Stories that break them can be > unpublished or removed — report anything that does to `abuse@skaz.io`.