Defining WordPress Terms, Part 4 – Publishing

This week I’d like to cover the options found in the Publish box of your post editor. Many of these options can also be found in the page editor, so we’ll cover them all in one place.

When you start out creating a new post, the Publish box shows a few options, and there are little Edit links beside each one. Go ahead and expand them all by clicking on those links so you can see the options.

Status: Until a post is Published or Scheduled, this drop-down will allow you to select either Draft or Pending Review. Draft is the default and it will save everything you’ve done without publishing the post to the site. Pending review is used on multi-writer blogs when contributors are finished writing their posts and are just waiting for an editor to review and publish them.

Visibility: Public means the post will publish and be live/public on the site as soon as you hit the blue Publish button. You also have the option of choosing “Stick this post to the front page” which will keep your post at the top of your page, even if you have published posts since this one. It’s great for things like announcements and giveaways that you don’t want people to miss. Password Protected publishes the post, and shows the title to the public. However, the content of the post can not be seen until a password is entered. This option is good for tight knit communities who wish to publish content that only their ‘members’ can see. When Private is selected the post will publish, but no link will appear on your blog page, and no one will be able to access the content unless they are actually logged into your site.

Publish: The publish date of a post is set by default to be the day and time you started the post. However, if you wish to change the date or time you can do that here. This is especially helpful for people who want to write once or twice a week and schedule their posts to publish throughout the week. Once a future date or time has been chosen and you hit the OK button, the blue Publish button will change to Schedule. Once a post has been scheduled it will automatically post on the date and time you selected!