Idiot Trying to Use WP Editorial Calendar plugin

  • I mistakenly thought that scheduling a draft would keep it a draft until polished and ready to publish. So each day unfinished things are going up on the site. I’m manually removing them, but am not sure how to reschedule them yet ensure they don’t go live on the next scheduled date.

    What should I be saving drafts as, and with what settings in calendar, to ensure that they don’t go live until I OK them? I’ve added ‘pending review’ but it doesn’t remove the ones that have already posted.

    What is the CORRECT way to use the scheduling feature, so it doesn’t publish them until I do it manually, when I complete them?

    Thanks!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Thank you for using the Editorial Calendar. I’m sorry you’re having an issue with it.

    The only posts that should go live on your blog are scheduled posts. When the date and time specified to schedule a post is reached then the scheduled post goes live and it becomes a published posts.

    Posts in the draft or pending state should never go live. Every new post created through the calendar or the standard WordPress mechanism is made a draft by default. To make it go live you have to open it and change the post status to published.

    Could you please give me a few more details about the steps you are following and what behavior you’re seeing.

    There is also a video about the Editorial Calendar which shows off most of the features. You can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/13196017

    Thank you,
    Zack

    Thread Starter dowbright

    (@dowbright)

    I understand now, and won’t be putting anything on the schedule unless it’s ready to post.

    My question is this: Is there ANY WAY to undo the mistake I made in dragging things to dates when I hoped to work on them and publish, but didn’t get to it? I have some that are still unfinished, yet they’re posted. I deleted the calendar (planning to reinstall after I solve this, now that I understand) but the posts are all still publishing on the days I dragged them to.

    I gotta solve this! I’m spending more time a day copy/pasting drafts to a new post that ISN’T on the calendar, then deleting the published posts, than I am getting any actual work done each day. Eons of time!

    It’s true. I have a huge number of drafts, and stupidly dragged them to dates. I can’t seem to undo it no matter what, even with the calendar gone, deleted, vamooshed.

    DANG ME! Not your fault. MINE.

    But I don’t know how long this will go on! Even the ones I tried changing the date on into the future are still showing up. The date hasn’t arrived but my unfinished posts have!

    Valuable lesson: never install a plugin until you truly understand the rules that govern it.

    Welcome to my nightmare! ;D

    Thanks, kids. I’m an old gal, so maybe it was brain-fade that made me do it. (nah. just plain dumb.)

    The calendar doesn’t have any data by itself. It just edits the posts WordPress uses. For this reason uninstalling the calendar won’t change anything.

    If you want to edit or delete published posts you need to find the post you want to edit in the standard WordPress posts menu. Then you can edit it there. You can also access the standard WordPress edit dialog from the calendar by clicking the edit link that appears under a post when you hover your mouse over it.

    Good luck,
    Zack

    Thread Starter dowbright

    (@dowbright)

    ?? Dang, I’m going to be doing a lot of copy/paste/delete for the next month!

    Such is life…

    How about putting them in a “pending” category until you are finished with them. Set your category to not show unless it has content, and NEVER have any live content in that category.

    Then, when you want to work on a draft, merely filter your posts to see the “pending” category. Will avoid having to search through all the live posts.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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