New WordPress Feature: Pending Review
WordPress has had support for “Contributor” users since version 1.3 (an unreleased development version in late 2004 that turned into version 1.5). Contributors could save drafts, but not publish their entries. Combined with open registration (default role: “Contributor”), this had a lot of potential for opening up blog contributions to the public. Or, with closed registration, it could provide for mandatory editorial review before posts were published.
Unfortunately, the idea wasn’t fleshed out. Contributors had two options: “Save and Continue Editing” or “Save.” Both saved their post as a draft. There was no way to tell the difference between an in-progress draft and a “ready for review” draft. People hacked their way around it, doing things like adding HTML comments in the body of the entry: <!--publish_me--> … but that was cumbersome for both Contributors and Editors.
Starting with WordPress 2.3 (and maybe even sooner for WP.com users), this process is a lot more natural. Contributors will now have a new button. It acts as a counterpart to the “Publish” button that Authors (and above) get. The button says “Submit for Review.” It leverages a new post_status called “pending.” Pending posts show up as links above the Write Post screen for Editors and Administrators, along with the “nags” for your own drafts and others’ drafts. These links hooks into the new Manage Posts screen coming in WP 2.3 (and already on WP.com) that Mike Adams did such a good job creating.
Here is an example of what an Editor or Administrator might see above their Write Post screen:
If there are one or two posts in any of these categories (pending, drafts, others’ drafts), it will show a link to each. If there are three or more, it will tell you how many there are, and display a link to the respective Manage Posts view. For Pending posts, an Editor or Administrator can click “View” to get an in-theme preview of the post. If it looks good, it’s only two clicks to Publish: “Edit” then “Publish.” If it still needs work, the Editor or Administrator can edit the post and make it a draft again, and maybe send an e-mail to the author informing them of the problems that are preventing its publishing.
There are obviously a lot more “editorial process” types of features that we could implement, but we’ll wait to see what the demand is for those sorts of things. The “Pending Review” feature is something that has been half-implemented for two-and-a-half years, and has been an itch that I’ve long wanted to scratch. Let me know how you like it, how it could be improved, and what sorts of cool contribution-driven sites you can build with it!
Update: WordPress.com users can now use this feature!
Great! This is an important function in my opinion. With all the fancy ajaxy “widget” stuff lately I was getting afraid wordpress was going in the wrong direction (sorry, my opinion).
This function again focuses on what it’s all about: managing content and the process of writing and publishing content.
matthijs
June 17, 2007 at 3:31 am
Excellent!! Job well done!
Will
June 17, 2007 at 4:17 am
[...] is a new feature in WordPress 2.3 Called Pending Review. This feature adds a “Submit for Review” Button for people logged in as Contributors on a [...]
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June 17, 2007 at 6:24 am
This sounds like a great feature. Although I’ve always solved it in multi-authored projects before, an actual pending functionality is of course preferred. Great!
TDH
June 17, 2007 at 12:44 pm
This is great news, I’ve been waiting for this !
Matt
June 17, 2007 at 2:31 pm
[...] vom WordPress Development Team schreibt über ein geniales neues Feature von WordPress 2.3: New WordPress Feature: Pending Review. WordPress has had support for “Contributor” users since version 1.3 […]. Contributors [...]
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June 18, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Definitely a nice feature. Does this link to the three drafts mean that there’s a dedicated management page for drafts? That’s something I’ve wanted for a while, especially for the ability to delete drafts in the same AJAX-y way that you can do it for published posts and comments.
Olly
June 22, 2007 at 8:30 am
Olly,
There isn’t a dedicated tab, but there is a dedicated view within the Manage » Posts screen. You have a bunch of dropdowns for picking different post criteria. “Status” is one of them. So if you pick “Draft,” you get all the drafts. And then, yes, you can click “delete” and get a nice asynchronous deletion. The links in the “nag” area just go to pre-configured views of the Manage » posts screen.
Mark Jaquith
June 22, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Cool, that sounds excellent. It’s a feature that I’ve been wanting for a while, since I’m terrible for making drafts and not finishing them
Olly
June 23, 2007 at 10:09 am
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June 27, 2007 at 10:15 am
This feature is a dream come true, since we have an editor network reviewing 94 writers.
Richard Graves
July 4, 2007 at 11:02 am
[...] more details, see this writeup from Mark [...]
Submit for Review « WordPress.com
July 10, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Hmm. I’m confused. I’m happy to be reviewed but friends have already seen my blog–so doesn’t that mean it’s published? They have not, however, been able to leave comments–something about enabling cookies. I’ve tried to figure out what to tell them but I have no clue. Thanks.
Nan Becklean
July 10, 2007 at 10:00 pm
[...] I read the following article ‘New WordPress.com Feature: Pending Review‘ too fast due to my impatient nature of having to read the many words despite the well [...]
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July 10, 2007 at 10:16 pm
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July 12, 2007 at 2:20 am
So when will this be available????
I have two clients who will greatly benefit from this.
Jermayn Parker
July 12, 2007 at 4:00 am
[...] info By Alphonse Yu Categories: Uncategorized Pending Review is a new post feature for Contributors using WordPress, where posts can be submitted for review to [...]
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July 12, 2007 at 6:53 am
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July 19, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Jermayn,
This will be availible in WordPress 2.3, which will be released around the end of September. It is availble now on WordPress.com
Mark Jaquith
July 19, 2007 at 7:08 pm
[...] more details, see this writeup from Mark [...]
explicative « texte
July 21, 2007 at 4:16 am
That really help, guys!
nICEsHARE
August 11, 2007 at 9:37 am
[...] Which means that drafts can be of two types now: posts still under editing(Draft) and posts that are ready to be published(Pending Review); there was no good way to differentiate like this earlier. An efficient way to immediately inform the contributor that the Pending Review post has been pushed back to Draft state by the editor, perhaps with a custom message attached explaining the reason for it, is however absent. EMail/IM etc are the alternate options for now. (More info) [...]
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August 28, 2007 at 11:16 am
Thanks for this feature. It’s going to prove very useful for some of our remotely-authored sites.
Corey
October 11, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Is there a way to authorize contributors to post without a review by the administrator?
Bill Callahan
October 18, 2007 at 1:39 pm
This feature puts WP in a new league. Expect new users to come on board.
Rich
November 4, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Hi, I have a strange little problem; when one of my contributers hits Submit for Review, their post gets published instantly! Wow! (But it breaks my editorial process.) I’ve verified that the Contributer role, using a different plugin, does not have publishing access. What’s going on? I’m on the latest WordPress…
I.S.
November 14, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I.S. – You are right on… “Submit for Review” officially does not work. Contributers who used to only be able to “Save” a post, can now “Submit for Review,” unfortunately that feature does publish the post directly.
Scott Goldblatt
November 22, 2007 at 9:59 am
This new feature is great but two things are missing for it to get perfect:
1) Warn admins that there are pending review posts via email.
2) Send an email to the contributing author telling him what’s been changed from his original post after publishing. I’m always doing this manually via email and it takes a lot of time. I want to make my contributors editors like me, but for that they need to understand what are my site’s defaults, schemes etc., you know what I mean? I want them to know exactly what have I changed and updated from their posts so they’ll know how to do them next time.
Thanks a lot!!
Rafael Fischmann
November 22, 2007 at 3:23 pm
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December 23, 2007 at 11:38 am
I would appreciate allowing contributors to upload images to posts. At present I do not believe they can do this.
cheezdog
January 8, 2008 at 7:15 am
Is there a way to have WordPress email a designated editor or administrator when an article is submitted for review?
Dave3
January 8, 2008 at 10:09 pm
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Gerri Webster
April 22, 2008 at 3:48 pm
All well and good but can an Email to Blog be auto approved so the author doesn’t need to manually publish it after??
Jon Warner
June 7, 2008 at 12:15 pm
[...] Here’s a small plugin I wrote to take advantage of the new pending review feature available in WordPress 2.3 and higher. I’m currently using it at [...]
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July 9, 2008 at 5:55 am
No answer to Jon Warner question? I have the same problem, post from email to Blog get stuck as pending review, which fefeat the purpose of email to Blog.
Help is appreciated.
zhuangzi
December 8, 2008 at 10:33 am
[...] New WordPress Feature: Pending Review « Mark on WordPress 16 Jun 2007 … is a new feature in WordPress 2.3 Called Pending Review. …. I have the same problem, post from email to Blog get stuck as pending review, … markjaquith.wordpress.com/2007/06/16/new-wordpress-feature-pending-review/ – 41k – Cached – Similar pages [...]
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April 10, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I have added 6 categories to my blog. In the view i cant see them. There status is at pending since long.
Plz help me
zia
April 24, 2009 at 5:47 am
This is what I want: I want to write a post in WordPress, save it as “pending” and then have a tool/function/feature inside WordPress that allows me to alert an author/contributor/editor that there is a post waiting for their review and approval. Once they review/approve, then they would publish and I would get a notice that said action is done. That would be sweeeet!
vectorjess
June 18, 2009 at 10:13 am