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#1 2022-05-12 15:11:06

Destry
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From: Haut-Rhin
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 4,909
Website

Can't remember name/maker of plugin

There was a plugin that could be used to provide a front-side link to a backend draft article for beta reading purposes, say. It was like a ‘View’ article thing, with full styling in effect, but for external access to unpublished articles, or maybe it was live articles with a future date, or something. I can’t recall the name of the plugin. I thought it might be one of Steph’s but nothing listed in his site jumps out by name. Was it by someone else? Ring a bell?

Btw, I don’t see a ‘New post’ button in the Plugin Support forum. Is that normal, or did I just get the boot?

Last edited by Destry (2022-05-12 15:12:51)

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#2 2022-05-12 15:34:49

bici
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From: vancouver
Registered: 2004-02-24
Posts: 2,072
Website Mastodon

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

Destry wrote #333258:

Btw, I don’t see a ‘New post’ button in the Plugin Support forum. Is that normal, or did I just get the boot?

it does appear if you are logged in. Double check again.


…. texted postive

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#3 2022-05-12 22:30:51

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,250
Website GitHub

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

Destry wrote #333258:

There was a plugin that could be used to provide a front-side link to a backend draft article for beta reading purpose

I think it’s rss_admin_edit or something. But you don’t really need a plugin any more. Just add a Form/shortcode called, say, edit_this:

<if::logged_in>
   <a class="edit_link" href="<txp:page_url type="admin_root" />?event=article&step=edit&ID=<txp:article_id />"><txp:image name="pencil-icon.png" /></a>
</if::logged_in>

Then just invoke it in your template anywhere you want to add the Edit link:

<txp::edit_this />

The <txp:image> inside the anchor of course is one I added to the site, so it rendered a tiny pencil graphic alongside the title of any articles, but you could remove that and season to taste. Perhaps make it an actual text link if you prefer.


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#4 2022-05-13 06:13:26

jakob
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From: Germany
Registered: 2005-01-20
Posts: 4,578
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Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

If you mean the other way around – allowing third-party visitors to preview a draft article “in-situ” without having a site login – I can’t remember there being a plugin for that. I know I’d find it useful.

If you give your visitors a login of the lowest privileges level, you can pass them the “View article” link. Depending on your site setup, that can look identical to the future article or not. The preview view discards the notion of status to show the article, so some template codes can cause duplication. There’s a discussion about that in this thread as well as a way to customise the output when viewing a preview link.

I can’t remember if there’s a way to make article_custom also show draft articles. I think the newer possibility of using status as a standalone attribute (i.e. without =sticky or = live) – mentioned in the link above – still restricts article output to live and sticky. If there is, that would be a way.

Other ideas:

  • Use a far-future date and publish a live article. Then make a section to show future articles in a preview layout (using time="future" – see here). You’ll want to hide that page from search machines and feeds so that it’s not discoverable. When you’re ready to publish, just “reset publish date to now”.
  • Similar to the above but with articles you set to be already expired (which I think usually takes them out of rss-feeds automatically).

You could go further and password-protect that area for those that need to view them, and if your site layout differs from the 1:1 of one article = one page, you could make your preview layout show the full and excerpt views.

(Side reference resurrecting this past post of Stef’s on editorial workflow that my search turned up)


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#5 2022-05-13 08:46:37

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,250
Website GitHub

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

Ah, jakob is on the money here. Ignore my rambling. Note to self: don’t gloss over the word ‘draft’ in the original post when reading late at night.

I agree, the only reliable way to do it is to set the article to a future date and ensure you exclude future content from showing on all sections, bar a special section you expose to editors who are working on upcoming articles. Using any other status codes will simply mean articles don’t show up on the front-end. Kinda frustrating, in a way.

It would be cool if <txp:article_custom /> could accept:

  • status="4" or status="live" as now
  • status="5" or status="sticky" for sticky posts
  • status or status="4, 5" (or live, sticky) for both the above
  • status="3" or status="pending" (hidden, draft, 1, 2, etc) to display articles with those status values.

That way, you could muck about with showing draft content on the public site and the onus is on you, as admin, for controlling access to it. I don’t know why it doesn’t do that. Or why we haven’t changed it to work that way. There’s probably an underlying subtlety that means it requires some internal refactorisation before it could become reality.


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#6 2022-05-13 10:51:35

Destry
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From: Haut-Rhin
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 4,909
Website

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

jakob wrote #333261:

If you mean the other way around – allowing third-party visitors to preview a draft article “in-situ” without having a site login – I can’t remember there being a plugin for that. I know I’d find it useful.

Exactly this. For example, if you needed a beta read on a text. It’s useful even if the text is not destined for publishing in the site, assuming it doesn’t need tons of fixing thereafter.

There was a plugin for this. Maybe it was one of Robert’s. It provided a kind of scrambled URL, reflecting nothing in your regular site architecture, that you could give the remote reader. I can’t recall what the article status needed to be for it to work, or date stamp, etc.

If you give your visitors a login of the lowest privileges level, you can pass them the “View article” link.

It’s just my site. If I have to do that then it’s easier/better to email them a doc. But the situation might be someone you don’t have an email for, or don’t want to give your email to, but you’re more than happy for a quick beta read. ;)

I mentioned the ‘View’ context, but that’s actually not important to me. It could be a ‘preview’ of the text. In fact, that would be better in this context since it removes the visual distraction.

But either way.

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#7 2022-05-13 10:59:07

Destry
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From: Haut-Rhin
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 4,909
Website

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

But, yeah, this kind of function would be great for texts destined to be published through the site, too. In that case, I’m not opposed to giving a friendly known an account for regular ‘reader group’ action.

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#8 2022-05-13 10:59:59

Destry
Member
From: Haut-Rhin
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 4,909
Website

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

bici wrote #333259:

it does appear if you are logged in.

Not for me.

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#9 2022-05-13 11:39:36

phiw13
Plugin Author
From: Japan
Registered: 2004-02-27
Posts: 3,058
Website

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

Destry wrote #333265:

Not for me.

I think you need some “Plugin developper” status or something like this.

–^–

On topic, the ability for a third-party to preview a draft article (and more or less “in context” in my case, as there were rather relevant images and so on in one case) is something I’ve wanted a few times. If I remember correctly I used the low-level login as a workaround – trusted third-party etc. Not sure if that is enough in a wider context though.


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#10 2022-05-13 17:11:34

Destry
Member
From: Haut-Rhin
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 4,909
Website

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

Oh, not that it probably helps, but I seem to recall the plugin imposed a time duration on which the generated URL was valid. That way you didn’t have links floating around in the world to eventual published pieces by a less desirable URL.

The plugin, if I’m not actually dreaming about it, came to mind and occurred to me as useful in multiple scenarios as of late, so I thought I’d hunt it down. But not a critical thing.

Thanks, anyhoo.

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#11 2022-05-14 08:11:32

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,250
Website GitHub

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

I honestly don’t recall such a plugin but it would be useful to expose drafts and such.

I mean, there is a way sort of to do it, and that’s to publish the Preview link for draft articles. But it still requires a login of some description. And I think the link changes when the article is updated as it’s timestamp based. Might have made that up.

Shall we give this concept some thought with a GitHub issue, and try to figure out how to do it naturally in core, for those that wish to expose unpublished content?


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#12 2022-05-14 09:16:30

jakob
Admin
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-01-20
Posts: 4,578
Website

Re: Can't remember name/maker of plugin

Bloke wrote #333271:

Shall we give this concept some thought with a GitHub issue, and try to figure out how to do it naturally in core, for those that wish to expose unpublished content?

I love the idea of having some kind of hard-to-discover but free to share link for people to view draft articles without having a login.

Bloke wrote #333262:

It would be cool if <txp:article_custom /> could accept:

  • status="4" or status="live" as now
  • status="5" or status="sticky" for sticky posts
  • status or status="4, 5" (or live, sticky) for both the above
  • status="3" or status="pending" (hidden, draft, 1, 2, etc) to display articles with those status values.

Yes! Please make this happen.


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