revise content without publishing it?
steve02476 - May 17, 2008 - 02:33
Let's say I have a story already published on my Drupal site. It needs to be revised, so I'd like Sarah to work on it tomorrow. But, I don't want her changes to be published until the next day, when Pat has a chance to approve the edits first. What's the easiest way to accomplish this? I don't want a big complicated workflow situation, just a way for some people to work on existing content without them making their work public until some other person has a chance to approve it. Thanks for hints.
Well, when editing your
Well, when editing your content, just don't check it "Published" under the "Publishing Options." You can still save it without being published until someone actually checks "Published." In the Revisions tab you can see who edited what and when. For the content type you are using, you can make the published workflow state off by default (just uncheck "Published" when editing the content type), so they only have to worry about actually checking the box to make it published.
I hope that makes sense.
I'm very much a newbie, so I
I'm very much a newbie, so I guess I don't understand. When creating a brand new story, I understand that it isn't shown on the site until it is published.
But I'm talking about a story that is already published and on the site, but needs to be revised. Is there some way that Person A can revise an already published page, so that the public page isn't yet changed, but the content has been changed as far as the Administration interface is concerned? So then Person B can look at the revisions, and if everything is ok, they can publish it.
I hope I'm making sense, but I'm not so sure (smile).
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not sure if this helps or hurts...
there was a module in 5.x called revision moderation; there is an issue regarding the port to 6.x. maybe you can help test?
Revision Moderation module
Thanks for the pointer!
It sounds like this module has exactly the functionality I want, BUT
* It doesn't seem like it was a "popular" for Drupal 5.x - do people not need this functionality???? Or are there other simple ways to achieve it it in 5.x? (I understand that some people use the Workflow module, but that seems light-years away from being simple.)
* As you say, the Revision Moderation module doesn't seem to be supported in 6.x. Maybe that won't be hard, just needs some testing & tweaking, but again, I don't understand, aren't there a lot of 6.x users that need this functionality? If so, what are they doing?
I think Drupal would be good for my client, but they have a requirement: They want to have a couple dozen "contributors" to their web site, but they only want a single person (the webmaster) to be able to publish items. No problem as far a new items go with Drupal core, I think, but it is expected that many items will be published early on and then will be modified many times as time passes - and the webmaster is to approve these edits before they go "live".
I'm very inclined to use Drupal for this project, because otherwise it seems like wonderful software that fits the needs very well. But I wonder if we should drop the idea of Drupal and use some other similar CMS that offers this functionality in the core distribution?
I'm just a little baffled I guess. I thought this sort of thing was assumed to be part of a serious CMS, but I guess there are thousands of Drupal sites that get along fine without it. Is it a matter of the "webmaster-boss" person just doing all the revision work him/herself, or is it more that the "webmaster-boss" person just trusts contributors not to publish sub-standard revisions to current content? Or maybe a lot of sites never go back and revise articles so the issue doesn't even arise?
I'm puzzled...
News/blog vs informational
After reading through my comments above, I think maybe there are two philosophical directions for CMS products, and maybe this is part of my confusion.
I think maybe a lot of the CMS products have evolved from being "news" or "blog" kind of sites. The idea is that an article gets published one time, and then may be commented on, but generally articles do not get edited after they have been published. In fact, it's almost ethically worrisome if an article is edited after being published. If an article is found later to be incorrect or incomplete, the original is left as-is, and perhaps a new article is published with the additional information.
But other CMS products are more like a reference book. If my CMS is all about "The Biology of Fish", and it contains an article entitled "Trout" and the article mentions that Trout are vegetarians, what should we do when it is called to our attention that in fact Trout eat insects? Make a comment to the article, or write a whole new article? Or course not, we want to edit the Trout article to make it more factual. And this kind of thing happens all the time with a "reference" kind of web site.
So, maybe Drupal is a "newsy" sort of CMS - it can be modified to work like a "reference" sort of CMS, but that's not its strength, and maybe people who really want a "reference" sort of CMS just look elsewhere?
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imo, it can be whatever you want; drupal is thought of as a "framework" (cmf) vs a "system" (cms); this makes it more flexible, and possibly harder to build on from the non-coder pov. this kind of use-case has been done in the past, but maybe a lot in developer-based systems? part of the maturation process, i guess.
the module creator is one of those that is concerned about usability and testing. i guess the moderation part is what has been so not in-demand, depending on the enabling and monitoring of revisions. if site maintainership is a single person, or a managed small group, some use the "delete/insert" tagging to indicate changes in-place. rather messy, but very open and honest. a thought would be to enable all to view (but not revert) revisions; this allows a kind of review process unto itself (modifying user is indicated in the list). if you are using the book module functionality, with the group editing, i would guess that would be "wiki-like," warts and all.
hmm, if you look at how this site's documentation is done, it utilizes the book module, anyone can add pages, with a limited "modify" group role (the doc maintainers). add comments where appropriate, and the comment may be deleted or noted when the suggestion is folded into the text.
when you finish your site, and if it is publicly accessible, maybe it can be submitted to the showcase as an example of a reference site? people always seem to be looking for examples (and site recipes).
just some thoughts. good luck!
Same Exact Issue
Hello steve02476. I'm experiencing the exact same issue you disucss in this thread. You made that comment a few months ago, so just wondering if you were able to come up with any solution. Any info/advice is much appreciated.
Thanks.
Our site isn't live yet, but
Our site isn't live yet, but we're still working on it.
We've decided to use Drupal 5.x and the Revision Moderation module, and in testing that seems to work fine. My impression from this forum and from talking to a few Drupal experts locally is that even though Drupal 6 has been out for a half of a year it's perfectly ok to use Drupal 5 with its large selection of well-debugged modules.
I still feel unsettled that Drupal doesn't have have this functionality built-in, but I think that is a result of its history. And it seems like great software in general, with a great community for support, so I'm just going to work around that unsettled feeling...
Thanks for the reply. Yeah,
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, we've decided to use Revision Moderation as well as the description summarizes exactly what we need--however we can't get it to work properly. When the editor role makes a change to the site, although it says that the page revisions are in moderation, those edits are actually published to the live site. But they shouldn't be until approved by an admin, right? Any ideas?
I just double-checked and it
I just double-checked and it seems to work ok on my site. I think the various permissions can be a little complex to set. I have two roles that I call "editor" (can edit existing nodes, but the edits aren't seen by the public) and "publisher" (same as editor, but also has the ability to approve a revision).
When I log in as someone with an "editor" role, I can make changes to pages, but the changes don't show when the page is viewed. So if I edit a page, then save my edits and just view the page, it looks unchanged. But if I go back in to edit the page some more, the previous edits are still there.
When I log in as someone with a "publisher" role, though, I can choose to "publish" a revision. Then anyone that views the page can see it.
Hope this helps!
Definitely helps. What would
Definitely helps. What would really help is if I could get a screen shot of the user permission checkboxes because that's where I think I'm messing up (although I've tried multiple variations of just about everything). There is something wrong--not sure if it's conflicting modules, screwed up user roles, or what, but some parameters are off not allowing me to do this correctly. Anyways, not sure if you'd be willing and how you'd get that over to me (email?), but a screenshot of all the checkboxes is much appreciated.
I can send a screen shot -
I can send a screen shot - just shoot me an email to smr at mac.com with your email address. -Steve