Workflow question: saving changes to published pages ??

Shepherd Jim · #1 Jan 25, 2010, 03:08 PM

Like many, we use WP and ATA more as a CMS than a "blog engine". As a result, I am most often updating already existing/published pages.

Now, when you're creating a new page, as with a new blog post, you're able to save your work at any point as a "draft" -- log out if you want. You can then come back, re-load your draft page into the text editor and continue working. When you finally have everything organized and tuned the way you want you push the "Publish" button and your creation goes out where the world can see it.

BUT, when working on an already published page, there does NOT appear to be any way to save changes on an interim basis. WP gives you TWO ways to see the page with your changes in place: there's a "View Page" button up to the right of the permalink and a "Preview Changes" button over on the right side of the screen in the "Publish" box.

What's the best way to make changes to a published page without having to have those changes visible before they're ready?

paulae · #2 Jan 25, 2010, 03:42 PM

If I have a post or page that's already been published and needs to stay in public view, but I also want to make changes in draft mode so somebody else can see it, I just make a new post or page with a similar title like "Community Calendar-test" and copy text from the "real" one, make my changes, save as Draft, and when we're happy with it, either delete the old one and rename the new one, or just copy/paste the new content into the old page. I don't know another way to do this, but this method works fine.

Shepherd Jim · #3 Jan 25, 2010, 11:39 PM

Hey Paula: Yep! As you suggest, I had rigged up a published page, but excluded from the page menu bar, called "test page" for DW Pam to use when editing. She refuses to work in the editor's "html mode" and has a miserable time trying to position pictures. She objects to the copying and pasting back and forth from the live pages to the "test page" and can't believe there's not a better solution.

Myself, I've pretty much always made adjustments and updates to published pages "live and in real time" -- feeling that anyone lucky enough to be visiting the site during my ministrations would just have a slightly more interesting experience as maybe pages "adjusted" as they clicked around -- of course, that's assuming someone would stay long enough to even notice.

But, coming up in the near future I'll be setting up e-commerce pages which I WILL want to maintain tight control over. I won't want customers to "see" half-populated product galleries or items that might have already been sold, etc. I guess I'll have to start using the "published but hidden" page trick myself.

BTW -- I'm wondering how "private" pages work. I've never bothered to make "test" pages private. Are they "hidden" from Google?

juggledad · #4 Jan 26, 2010, 04:43 AM

Quote:

BTW -- I'm wondering how "private" pages work. I've never bothered to make "test" pages private. Are they "hidden" from Google?

take a look at this: 'Do private pages get crawled and do they show up in search engine results' (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/351118)

Shepherd Jim · #5 Jan 26, 2010, 08:28 AM

Hey JD:

Thanks! Yeah, I had read that thread in the WP forum. Google isn't very communicative about how their indexing robots do their work. I have to wonder if Google can't scan a page even if the page is a wp "private" page. A regular visitor even if they type in the page's exact URL is served a "Sorry, you're looking for something that's not there." message ...but does that stop Google?

I've looked at the "page source" of my private test page and can't see where/what the "private" designation shows up.

The one thing I do notice in the source when viewing the private page (I have to be logged in to view it) is "<body class="page page-id-2498 logged-in">"

If I log out and then type in the URL I see "<body class="error404">"