Draft, Publish, and Schedule: Controlling When Content Goes Live

Draft

A Draft is only visible to logged-in users with the right permissions. It’s saved automatically as you work, so it’s the safe place to leave something unfinished. Every new post or page starts as a Draft by default until you actively publish or schedule it.

• Drafts can be previewed before going live – use the Preview button in the top toolbar to see how the page will look to visitors, without actually making it public.
• Auto-save happens periodically in the background, but it’s still worth manually saving (using Save draft) before closing the browser or navigating away, especially after a big chunk of work.
• Multiple editors can have drafts on the go at once – if you’re not sure whether someone else is already working on a page, check with the team before making major changes, since simultaneous editing can cause conflicts.

Pending Review

Our sites use the a Revisions plugin, which adds a “Pending Review” status between Draft and Publish. This lets an editor mark content as ready, so a senior editor or admin can review it before it goes live, rather than it publishing straight away. If your role allows it, you’ll see this as an option alongside Draft, Publish, and Schedule in the same panel.

• If you submit a page for review, it stays in its current live/offline state until the review is approved – submitting for review doesn’t itself change what’s visible to the public.

Publish

Publishing makes the content live on the site immediately, visible to anyone who visits the page.

• Once published, you can still edit the page – changes save as normal, but they go live as soon as you click Update (the button changes from “Publish” to “Update” after the first publish).
• With PublishPress Revisions active, edits to an already-published page may themselves go through the Pending Review step before they overwrite the live version, rather than updating immediately – check with your reviewer setup if you’re unsure whether your edits need approval.
• You can also revert a published page back to Draft at any time (via the status option in the Publish panel), which immediately takes it offline without deleting it.
• WordPress keeps a revision history of changes, so if something goes live by mistake or needs reverting, previous versions can usually be restored – check the “Revisions” link in the sidebar.

Schedule

If you want something to go live at a specific future date and time (a newsletter announcement, an event that shouldn’t appear too early), you can schedule it instead of publishing straight away.

1. In the right-hand sidebar of the editor, find the “Publish” panel.
2. Click on the date next to “Publish” (it may say “Immediately”).
3. Choose your future date and time, then click “Schedule” instead of “Publish”.

• A scheduled post shows as Scheduled in the posts/pages list, along with the date and time it’s due to go live, so it’s easy to spot at a glance.
• You can edit a scheduled post at any time before it goes live – updates save without changing the scheduled date, unless you specifically change it.
• To cancel a scheduled publish and go back to Draft, open the post and change the status back manually before the scheduled time hits.

Careful: Scheduled content will publish automatically even if nobody is logged in at the time – double check the date and time before confirming. Also bear in mind server/site time zone settings may differ from your own – if in doubt, check what time zone the scheduler is using before setting a time close to a deadline.