Making an event public, what can stop it, and trying the whole thing out in test mode before any money moves.
A new event is a Draft: only you can see it. Publish, at the top of every screen of the event, makes its page public and opens entries. Unpublish takes it down again.
If something would stop the event working, Publish says what, as a numbered list, with a link to the Settings where each one is fixed. The usual one is a paid event with no Stripe account connected.
A brand new organisation cannot publish until we have checked it, which usually takes less than a working day. See Creating your account.
Test mode lets you try everything - publishing, entering, paying - before Stripe is connected. Turn it on at the top of the event's Settings with Turn on test mode.
Go live deletes every test entry and test form response on the event, and from then on real payments are taken. A paid event cannot go live until Stripe is connected.