What is the Draft Status in WordPress? #
“Draft” is one of eight post statuses available in WordPress. A post in the Draft status is not published and it not visible to the public.
The “Save Draft” link is available when you edit posts in WordPress:
Draft is often confused with the “Pending Review” status. However, these two statuses have different meanings:
- Draft: “This post is not ready to publish. I'm still working on it.”
- Pending Review: “This post to publish. Someone else can approve and publish”.
This guide explains the difference between Draft and Pending Review.
Moving a Published Post to Draft #
Once a post is published, the “Draft” status is the default choice for unpublishing the post. You will not see an “Unpublish” button. Instead, you will see a “Switch to draft” link.
If you click this “Switch to draft” link., you will see the message, “Are you sure you want to unpublish this post?”. If you click “OK”, your post will no longer be published or visible to the public.
How to find Draft Posts #
WordPress makes it easy to find your posts in the “Draft” status.
- Go to the “Posts” screen.
- Click the “Drafts” link at the top of the screen.
You will also notice that all posts in the “Draft” status are labelled with “Draft” next to their title.
If you want to see all you posts in the Draft status, we recommend the PublishPress plugin.
- Go to PublishPress, then “Content Overview”.
- Choose “Draft” in the first dropdown.
- Choose your username in the third dropdown.
Which users can access Posts in the Draft status? #
By default, any user that can create content can use the Draft status. This means that Contributors, Authors, Editors and Administrators can all move posts to the Draft status.
Users in the Subscriber role have no access to the “Posts” screen.
We don't recommend changing the permissions for the Draft status, because it is a core feature of WordPress.