WordPress makes publishing your content on the Web easy. However, one shortcoming the basic WordPress editing and publishing workflow is that once something has been published, it cannot be further modified without affecting the live site content. A page that needs to update every semester, for instance, cannot be edited beforehand and scheduled for re-publishing without duplicating and moving pages.
The BU Versions plugin introduces a new workflow for staging edits to published content. When the plugin is activated, you are given the ability to clone published posts, creating an Alternate Version where content changes can occur without affecting the live content. This alternate version can co-exist with the original post for as long as necessary.
When content changes are complete and ready to be published, the alternate version can replace the original post. You can even schedule the replacement to occur at a specific date and time.
Who is this plugin for?
The alternate version workflow is especially useful when you have users on your site that are not permitted to edit published content. You may have a user with the Contributor role (or perhaps a Section Editor with editing capabilities limited to a specific area of the site) that wants to submit changes for review. Since these restricted users are allowed to create alternate versions, it makes it easy to implement a workflow for editing, reviewing, and publishing site content.
This plugin is available to anyone at BU with a WordPress site and is recommended for anyone that interested in implementing a content publishing workflow.
Since all website teams do not necessarily need to use a workflow, we have implemented this as an optional plugin. In order to start using it, you’ll need to request activation of the BU Versions plugin for your site.