In a current project, I had a client asking about the content publishing feature which led me to learn more about this aspect of WebGUI that I've never really used. Along the way, I discovered that this feature has an "egregious omission" in that it doesn't do what you'd think it would do.

In a nutshell, the publish date works fine but there's no built-in logic in place to decommission a version tag once the End time has passed. You can read more in my bug report.

As I stated in the bug report, it seems that there's some unfinished thinking around what WebGUI should do when a version tag reaches its End time. Should the version be rolled back and deleted (potential loss of data)? unlocked and left as an open tag (potentially leads to lots of open version tags)?

I'm not sure that I like either of these options which makes me wonder if a version tag is the best way to handle content publishing. What if we could use the same hide/show feature on page layouts to publish/unpublish content? Perhaps you have some other ideas.

As I said above, this is not a feature of WebGUI that I use, but it is a common feature found in other solutions. Until this issue is resolved, it seems that WebGUI is only halfway addressing the publishing needs of users.

William

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Knowmad Technologies
http://www.knowmad.com

We already kind of have a way for certain assets to be hidden from normal view but still exist (and show up in searches): the "archived" status. The Collaboration uses it, but there's no reason every asset couldn't use it in the same way.

That's an interesting idea, Doug. I'd add that we may also want a way to disable the asset from showing up in searches. For example, if I've archived an annual event until next year, I may not want it to appear in searches (although in this particular example I could see it being beneficial to show up so maybe this isn't needed).

I do think that start/end should still be handled by version tags. In 8 especially, tags are more of a voluntary staging of content and less of a required step in creating content. We can certainly do more to make tags easier to use, even above what we're doing in 8.

This sounds like a fantastic improvement to the version system!

Thanks,
William

UPDATE: Has the quote tag been removed from forums?

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Knowmad Technologies
http://www.knowmad.com