> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tallwatch.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Posting updates

> Show incident updates on your status page, automatically from monitors and manually for planned work, and manage email subscribers.

Your status page shows two kinds of incident updates: the ones Tallwatch derives from your monitors, and the ones you write by hand. Manual updates are how you communicate during an outage or planned maintenance, in your own words.

## Automatic updates

When a monitor on the page opens an incident, the page reflects it without any action from you. The component goes red, and the incident shows in the feed. When it resolves, the page updates again. For a lot of situations this is all you need.

## Post a manual update

When you want to explain what's happening, publish from the incident itself. Open the incident detail page and click **Publish to status page** (it reads **Update status page** once the incident is already published somewhere).

<Steps>
  <Step title="Pick which pages to publish to">
    The dialog lists every status page that contains this incident's monitor. Pick one or more. Pages where this incident is already posted are pre-selected so you update them in place.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Write the update">
    Give it a title and a body. The body takes Markdown, so you can add links and formatting.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set severity and status">
    Pick a severity (`minor`, `major`, `critical`, or `maintenance`) and a status. Statuses move through `investigating`, `identified`, `monitoring`, and `resolved`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Publish, then update as you go">
    Publish it, then come back to the incident and publish again to append an update as the situation changes. Move it to `resolved` when the work is done.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  Publishing lives on the incident, not in the status-page editor. The
  standalone editor has no publish button, so the incident is the single place
  you write public updates from.
</Note>

<Tip>
  Use the `maintenance` severity for planned work so visitors can tell a scheduled deploy apart from a real outage. Pair it with a [maintenance window](/monitors/maintenance-windows) so the monitors don't open their own incidents during the work.
</Tip>

## Email subscribers

Visitors can subscribe to a status page with their email and get notified when you publish or update an incident.

Subscription is double opt-in. A visitor enters their address on the page, Tallwatch sends a confirmation email, and only after they click the link do they start receiving updates. Each notification carries a one-click unsubscribe link (and the `List-Unsubscribe` header mail clients use), so unsubscribing is a single click and stays compliant with bulk-sender rules.

Only verified, still-subscribed addresses are emailed, and notifications go out when you publish a new incident or change an incident's status.

## RSS feed

Every public status page also exposes an RSS feed of its published incidents:

```
https://api.tallwatch.com/api/v1/public/status-pages/{slug}/rss
```

Point a reader or an automation at it to follow a page without email. The feed lists the most recent published incidents, newest first, with the latest update in each item.

<Note>
  The RSS feed serves public pages only. A private or password-protected page
  returns `404` on its feed so its incident history stays behind the lock.
</Note>