Drafts & Published Content

As you work on content in GW Drupal you will want to save what you have done. You can save content as a draft, only visible to logged in users or as published content visible to anyone. 

Creating or Editing a Draft

If you create a new page, or begin working on a new version of an existing page, Drupal will create a new draft. When working on a draft, Drupal will automatically place a lock on that page preventing other users from making edits at the same time. This lock will stay in place until the draft has been saved or the page has been unlocked. The page will stay locked if you navigate away from it without saving.

screenshot of the page lock status message

Users with the permission level of Content Owner or Site Owner have the ability to break a lock on a page, however this could result in lost work if another user is still working. 

screenshot showing the unlock status message

Saving Content as a Draft

It is important to save your work as you create or update content because Drupal does not have an autosave feature. Using the Save button at the bottom of the page will preserve all of your work in a draft. This moderation state is only visible to logged in users and is a great way to save a work in progress. Once you have saved as a draft you will see tabs at the top of the page that allow you to view your draft, edit your draft and view the published version of your content. 

Screenshot of the save button

 

If you save a draft of a page that is currently published, you will see a latest version tab added to the top of the page. 

screenshot of the editing tabs

Saving Content as Published

Publishing content is not available for all User Accounts. It is restricted to Content Owners and Site Owners; Editor users can only save content as a draft. When you are ready to publish something, you will do so by going to the publishing options at the bottom of the page and changing the current state from draft to published. Next, use the save button to finalize your decision. Once this content is saved and published it will be live and visible to all users visiting your site or searching for keywords found in your content. 

screenshot of the save button with the state set to published

 

Unpublishing Content

In some cases, you may need to unpublish content that is live on your site. Rather than deleting the content you can change it from published back to a draft or unpublished. You can do this by editing a page, going to the publishing options and using the Change to: dropdown to Archived/Unpublished.

 

Note: Archiving/Unpublishing is not the same as permanently deleting a page. 

 

Managing Versions of a Page

You can view and manage all of the saved versions of a page by using the Revisions tab. All page edits will be listed in reverse chronological order with the published revision displayed in yellow. From this screen you can view, delete, or revert back to any previously saved version.