Publish Safeguard Request

Personally I would prefer it not to nanny me. It’s easy enough to not hit the publish button.

Sorry you had a rough childhood. And as much as I’d love to think of myself as unique in every respect, I don’t think I am. So I have a feeling I’m not the only person on the planet who does not find it “easy enough to not hit the publish button.”

Ok so what help will it be to have an AYS nag? You mean to say that you won’t just blindly hit the “yes” button?

I’m sure you aren’t the only person who thinks an AYS prompt might help. Though they have just been removed from a whole load of places in favour of undo functionality.

It’d probably be do-able with a plugin.

Apparently, somebody came up with a Molly Guard hack to address the problem.

I’m fine with the Undo functionality in all other areas. Regarding the Publish button, however, the problem, as I stated earlier, is that the moment one hits it, the content goes out to all RSS subscribers. So while I can undo my accidental publishing on my end and reset my content to Draft status, I can’t recover and remove my accidentally published draft from people’s RSS readers.

That’s why accidental publishing is a bit different from accidentally clicking anything else that can easily be undone. With one’s RSS feed activated, accidental publishing CANNOT be undone.

Ok, though I don’t fully understand what you mean. Feeds are pulled and if you retract the article it’d only be live for as long as you take to unpublish.

It hasn’t been my experience that a post in a feed ever gets pulled once it’s been published no matter how many times the author nukes or unpublishes it on his or her own end.

In fact, I just double-checked, and I found several posts in my Google Reader that were published and then pulled or deleted by other WP bloggers months ago. I can still read the entire entries in my feed, yet when I click on the headlines to visit the original page, I get a 404 “Page not found.”

In fact, the official term for people who have a tendency to publish and then pull is “RSS tease,” precisely because the published-and-pulled posts or drafts remain in people’s RSS readers forever, yet when they click on them, they get “Page not found.”

Surely that’s an issue with the site or reader pulling the feed – not the application producing the feed on demand?

I don’t know who or what it is an issue with. The point is, it wouldn’t be an issue at all if upon hitting Publish an “Are you sure you want to publish?” window would pop up, as this would drastically reduce the number of inadvertently published WordPress posts in this world.

And if such a pop-up is not desirable because it would make a certain segment of WP users feel excessively nannied, at least I’d like to be able to change the big blue Publish button into a tiny #ccc-colored letter P about 2px in height and move it as far bottom left as humanly possible, so it will require some conscious effort on my part to actually locate it prior to publishing, which, in turn, would effectively eliminate the odds of my hitting it by accident.

I don’t know who or what it is an issue with.

My point is that you may be trying to fix the problem in the wrong place.

And if such a pop-up is not desirable because it would make a certain segment of WP users feel excessively nannied,

Count me in that group. I would be seriously annoyed by such a popup every time I wanted to publish a post.

at least I’d like to change the big blue Publish button into a tiny #ccc-colored letter P about 2px in height,

Which would create a major problem for some user groups. Not everyone has 20:20 vision or perfect mouse control.

This is the perfect place to fix the problem, because this it where it originates.

Count me in the group of those who are seriously annoyed by this big blue thing just sitting there right below Save Draft and Preview without any such safeguard. And how many times a day do you publish anyway that you’d be seriously annoyed by a little popup?

And I’m not suggesting the size and location of the button be changed for everybody, let alone near-sighted groups with poor mouse control. I’ll be happy to change it myself. I just need to find the file and the stylesheet where it is defined. I suppose the file is meta-boxes.php. Do you happen to know which stylesheet defines its size, shape, and location?

And how many times a day do you publish anyway that you’d be seriously annoyed by a little popup?

Counting all of my clients as well as my own sites – could be more than 20 or 30 times a day.

Do you happen to know which stylesheet defines size, shape, and location of the Publish button?

Off the top of my head, nothing specific beyond the admin CSS sheets but the best way to approach this might be to look at creating a simple Admin theme so that your changes aren’t over-written the next time you upgrade WP.

Try also this: https://dev-tips.com/featured/wordpress-plugin-are-you-sure

Personally, I’m glad there is no nag button. I’ve accidentally published before, and it was a learn once, pay attention for me. I almost always save as draft and review many times before posting, so it became a habit. I can see where people would want to do it, but … this is clearly plugin territory.

Thanks for the plugin link. I’ll try it.

I always save as draft and review gazillions of times myself, but it only takes one split-second of not paying attention to accidentally publish my unfinished draft.

Besides a plugin, one solution would be simply to add a “Sure you want to publish?” nag that can be activated or deactivated by the user based on his or her preference, for instance by checking or unchecking a box in Writing Settings. In fact, the pop-up window itself could have a checkbox that says “Never show this window again.”

In fact, the pop-up window itself could have a checkbox that says “Never show this window again.”

I could probably live with that, though I suspect that it would mean a extra database call to check the status of the feature, which still would be less than ideal.

The linked plugin seems to do exactly what you’re asking for, though, I’d go with that if it’s something you desire.

I still maintain, though, that you’re trying to fix this in the wrong place. The issue is in your head, not with the UI design. If you have problems now accidentally publishing, you’d soon train yourself to click “publish” then “yes” without any second thought, rendering the dialogue box useless.

If you have problems now accidentally publishing, you’d soon train yourself to click “publish” then “yes” without any second thought, rendering the dialogue box useless.

I highly agree. Back in the day, we used to call this ToS Syndrome (I wonder if it’s still called that). Just think of how many Terms of Service or License agreements that you have clicked “Yes” or “I Agree” on without giving it a second thought.

No matter how many click buttons you put in your way, soon enough you’ll train yourself to click them all.