Forum
Scheduling of page deletion/publishing/unpublishing
Apologies if this has already been asked about. Are there plans to add automatic/scheduled page deletion/unpublishing/publishing to Perch Runaway? This is the most requested feature from current and new clients, at least for me, by a clear mile. For example, for events, jobs and so on.
I think that's the first time we've heard that request.
Is there a reason not to do with with a basic filter?
Thanks for your quick response, Drew. I'm surprised, I guess. It's something most of my clients have asked about - not only those who have come from CMSs where it's standard (like Umbraco) but because it reduces maintenance on content that times out. I'm not actually our tech developer, so I'm afraid your response doesn't mean to much to me - can you expand a little so I can pass it along?
Well we wouldn't expect events, jobs and so on to be a "page". They would be an item in a Collection which you could filter on date or whatever you want. That way you can manage what happens when that content has disappeared rather than just giving people a 404.
It would probably better if a develop posted directly here rather than passing messages up and down :) They can just create an account and post themselves.
Martin Elliff, who develops our websites, is on holiday; he is registered on here. I was answering a client query and just thought it would be useful for my own sake to ask for an expanded explanation. I'm sorry if this was an inconvenience.
I've just edited this because it sounded curt, though it wasn't intended to be. Thanks for your response.
Another reason I raised this is simply because I'm client-facing, so I tend to get asked questions which developers don't. Thanks again.
I was just mentioning it because we get people not realising their developers can create their own account.
We really need to see code to be able to help with implementation, which tends to mean chatting directly to the developers. It's not an "inconvenience", it's just not productive for anyone as there are so many ways you could implement something in Perch we need to know how you've implemented to be able to advise.
I develop most of Peter's sites (he designs and tests them) and we did consider using a filter, but there seem to be some drawbacks with this approach. Unless I'm missing something, it means that changes have to be made to search, navigation and other standard features in Perch (i.e. the page / collection would be included) which really shouldn't be needed if it was a core option (a simple live or not live option). These would then need to be maintained/added to each site we create. I know Drew's said that this is the first time he's been asked for this, but a quick look at the forums show others are looking for ways to hide unpublished content - which is something that publish/unpublish should resolve.
Thanks again for the reply. I have asked Martin to respond directly so you can have a peer discussion. I've spoken to him and he says that he is aware using filters but that there are some drawbacks. It's better he raises this, as you say.
How much control would you need over unpublishing? Would you need to be able to set a redirect URL?
The main thing would be to have a basic published/unpublished status in the page options.
An unpublished page should be treated on the front end as if it does not exist.
So any unpublished pages do not show in nav groups, search results, etc.
On the associated wish list would be an option to enter a redirect url, if none exists it should go to the 404. So if a page is temporarily unpublished then it redirects if found via Google or external link. And secondly on the associated wish list would be scheduling the published status. So that a press release can be scheduled to publish at midnight or a job page can be scheduled to expire.
Agree with Martin that some form of scheduling would be useful for different page/elements.
As an example a recent request by customer:-
"Can you please put a big notice on the front page saying that we are closed for our annual holidays from monday 11th Jan, reopening at 1030am on Friday 29th Jan and perhaps either take the notice off on 29th Jan, or set up a time thing so that it automatically deletes when it comes to the 29th."
It was added as an ad/info block region. As their request it would be useful to be able to specify an publish/unpublish time/date so 'remembering' to unpublish manually would be unnecessary.
As a region it wouldn't impact on the page url so in that instance a redirect would not be required.
In this instance it is not a big deal but having the ability to schedule page regions for promotional purposes/special offers etc would be a useful option.
Hi all, not sure if this feature has been picked up to be added in to Runway (possibly Perch as well?), but I think it would be a great addition and is a feature commonly found in other systems. The use cases shown above seem to be fairly common with a lot of clients, i.e. drafting content ahead of time and wanting to set a publish date / time and also the auto-unpublish for timed content.
It would be a bit of a hassle to have to implement a workaround on multiple sites for this kind of functionality and I do believe that the majority of clients, at least the ones I deal with, have come to expect that they can do this as standard.
Apologies if this is on the road map already, I was just searching for a way to do this and came across this thread.