WordPress 3.6: Editorial Flow
I’m really excited to see our editorial flow get some love in the 3.6 cycle! We always want to be as extensible as possible and post statuses are one of those places where we’re not near as good as we should be. The plan goes something like this:
- Fully support the existing register_post_status() API in core
- Make sure things don’t break when you add your own custom statuses
- Update the metabox UI to show any newly registered statuses in the drop down, etc.
- Add a ‘moderation’ flag so that unpublished statuses can be explicitly identified
- Support for non-standard public post statuses
- Enhance the existing API
- Add support for registering post statuses to specific post types
- Allow for caps checks on different post statuses
- New remove_post_status() function for removing an already-registered post status
- Editing workflow for already published content
Additionally, we hope to address some issues around post meta for revisions, which is tightly related to the workflow for already published content.
@markjaquith and I have chosen Daniel Bachhuber to lead this. If you’re not sure why, just Google WordPress Edit Flow and it’ll all make sense. There’s a lot of heavy-duty under the hood work here, so please leave a comment if you’re interested in lending a hand.
F J Kaiser, and 14 others are discussing. 
Mike Schinkel 9:08 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
Been waiting for this for a while…
conservativeread 9:11 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
i want post tags and related posts to be automatic, i would also like to see more support for posting outside of admin from desktop apps like wlw and the new blogjet.
Aaron D. Campbell 9:14 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
Automatic tagging and related posts will both continue to be in plugin territory for now. I know there are some good ones out there, but the usecase is still too small to justify having that functionality in core.
As for the desktop apps, WordPress as an XMLRPC API that they can use to post to it (the same one the mobile apps use). I don’t personally use any of those tools, but the capability is definitely there.
Joey Kudish 9:17 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
I’m interested in helping with this effort!
Md Mahmudur Rahman 10:47 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
This is the ideal time to address some issues pointed out in the below article (WordPress And Government) by @StephenCronin, as we are talking about Editorial Flow for the next release.
http://scratch99.com/wordpress/government/use-of-wordpress-in-government/
To be specific (quoted from the article):
“Enterprise Level Websites
Everyone has a different definition of ‘enterprise level’. It’s probably not sensible to try to tie that definition down. Instead, I’ll describe the sort of website I’m talking about:
Anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 pages (and let’s not talk about PDFs!)
Anywhere from 3 to 7 levels deep: the site I’m currently working on will be 7 levels deep minimum
The majority of content not chronologically based
Several hundred distributed authors, located around the state, spread throughout maybe 60 business areas, each with their own signoff processes.
Centralised editorial quality assurance
Complex workflows:
One piece of content may need to go through 5 levels of approvals
Another may only need to go through 2 levels
There will be different approval steps and different users for different content types and different categories
Example: Content author -> Manager -> Communications -> Web Editor -> Tech QA -> Publish.
Note: It’s not about traffic. We all know WordPress can scale, for example as in the case of WordPress.com. Rather it is about complexity and the ability of WordPress to handle this sort of site out of the box.”
Cheers.
Mark Jaquith 3:58 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
So, the workflow and QA things you mention are kind of where this is going. Not building that into core directly, but making it easier for a plugin like Edit Flow to implement custom post statuses and a more complex posting workflow.
Md Mahmudur Rahman 4:12 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I couldn’t agree more.
Vitor Carvalho 4:05 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
You could, however, use a multisite instalation to achieve what you need, separating some of the content and workflow.
Justin Sainton 11:12 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
I know @ryancduff and I would definitely love to help out here.
Scott Kingsley Clark 11:21 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink
Oh very nice, I shall eat cake on this day.
Tom Lany 12:32 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
It would be nice if editors could receive an email when a post is saved in the moderation queue.
Stephen Cronin 12:39 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Looking forward to watching how this pans out! This has been a pain point for larger organisations for a while.
Happy to give the perspective of the requirements for a large site (up to 5 levels of approvals, different approval steps / user groups for different content, based on content types, categories, even individual pages, etc), if catering for that sort of site is within scope.
nuggetsol 6:16 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
This would be a really nice addition to the core. I have developed a plugin which aims towards supporting workflow management – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/oasis-workflow/
I have got some good feedback from the users. I am planning to add some new features, but support for custom statuses out of the box would be really wonderful.
Konstantin Kovshenin 9:10 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I’m willing to contribute as much as it takes to get this done. Can somebody please list the existing tickets? Ones I’m aware of are #12706 #15132 #21787 #7745
Vitor Carvalho 4:22 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I would like to contribute to it to. We should be carefull about we deal with post status transitions too.
Related: #22241
Vitor Carvalho 4:50 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
*how we deal
Vitor Carvalho 4:06 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Fantastic idea! That is something I was expecting for some time ago. I will keep in touch with some of that tickets and help where I can.
William P. Davis 2:11 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink
I’d love to help on this.
F J Kaiser 6:02 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink
One thing where I’d really love to see a solution is about that freaky thing that happens when switching “visibility” from “public” to “private”. When doing so, the “Save as (draft/etc.)” button disappears. It doesn’t come back when switching to “public” anymore. Ticket incl. several patches that cover different scenarios is here http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21563
lucasstark 1:33 pm on January 12, 2013 Permalink
Any way we can also figure out a way for published content to remain published when a user submits updates for review? One of the trickest things to work around is to allow users without publish rights to submit updates to content with out taking that content offline. Seems like we could serve up the last published revision, assuming we have all metadata and taxonomy selection attached to the revision, rather than taking the main page off line. Right now I’m using a customized version of Boston Universities Versions Plugin, which does an OK job, but would be nice if this was built into core.
The way it works now is “ok” for posts and news style items, but really seems to break down when dealing with pages.
Dave Clements 8:59 pm on January 15, 2013 Permalink
+1. Would love to be able to register new post statuses. Wish I was savvy enough to help out!