5.1. Basic Publication States

In the upper right corner of the edit panel for any content type -- folders, images, pages, etc., and any specialized content types -- there is a menu on the right for publication state. This state menu has settings for controlling publication state:

At UofL, These are the default transition options to change state that appear in the state: drop-down:

• Make Private
• Publish
• Require Login
• Restrict Access
• Submit

The header for the menu will show the current publication state for the content item, such as state: public draft, as shown above. Public draft is the initial state when you create a content item -- an uploaded image, a page, a news item -- and in the public draft state, as the name indicates, the content item will generally be available to visitors to the web site.  There are several subtleties about this, however. Content items in public draft state may or may not be shown in menus, but they could be seen by search engines and by direct access by web address.  So, if the item is definitely meant to be hidden from view, because it is very rough draft perhaps, the make private menu choice is the appropriate step after the content item has been created.  

Also, and this will be very important, certain content types, such as news items and events, will not appear on the website as you expect, until they are explicitly published.

Store this in your memory: Publication state is important!

Publication state can be changed only by users whose accounts have the necessary permissions. The menu choices in the state menu will reflect existing permissions settings. For example, in a big newspaper web site, a reporter could add pages for news articles, but the state menu will not show a publish menu choice, only a submit menu choice. This is because a reporter must submit articles up the line to the editorial staff for approval before publication.  If your account has the permissions, however, the publish menu choice will appear and you can simply publish in one step.

For an editor, a content item that has been submitted may be published or rejected, either outright, because it is an inappropriate submission for the situation, or for the more typical reason that the content item needs revision.

After a content item has been published, it may be retracted, to change the state back to public draft state, and from there set to private, if desired. The menu choices in the state menu will change accordingly.

Consideration should be given to retracting ("unpublishing"), or setting to private, any content that has become obsolete or undesired for some reason.  Setting to private will take the item from public view and from showing up in search results, but will keep it around in case the format or the actual material (text, images, etc.) is needed later. This is especially true for content relating to events that may recur or to one-of-a-kind creations. The decision to delete or to set to private may depend on whether or not the content exists elsewhere, on a local computer.  If the content is large in size, in the sense of disk space taken, perhaps saving to a local computer is warranted before deletion, if space on the website server computer is an issue.

UofL's added features

The Require Login and Restrict Access transitions are specific to UofL. They provide extra functionality beyond the default security states.

Require Login

Require Login allows you to require that a person login with a valid UofL userID before they are allowed to view a piece of content. It's great for restricting access to forms or semi-restricted content so only people with an active UofL account can view content.

Restrict Access

UofL's Restrict Access option adds a bit more security to an item. It sets an item so it is Restricted Access, and allows you to create read-only intranets to secure access to sensitive information. Many people will use this for restricting access to a folder that contains items such as phone lists, budget spreadsheets, or any other kind of information that they only want available to a select few users. You can grant those users the "Restricted User" role for that folder by using the folder's Sharing tab.

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