Overview of Publisher

The Publisher feature is available in the Pro version of PublishPress Series. This feature allows you to quickly publish all posts linked to a Series.

The Publisher feature works by adding a Status to each Series. If the status for a Series is “Unpublished”, all posts tied to that Series can be individually published, but those posted will be “held” until the Series itself is published. Once the Series is “Published”, all previously published posts in that series will be immediately published and visible on your site. Any posts in a Series still in the Draft status will be left as such and will not be published (until individually published). If you have a large number of articles, this saves time and provides a clean “publish” with no accidental broken links from unpublished posts.

This image below shows the Publisher screen:

You have the ability to “Publish” or “Unpublish” an issue by clicking on the text link to the right of the Series name.

A Series, unless specified as “Unpublished” starts in an “Ignored” state. This is essentially the same as “Published” because posts which are published individually will appear on your site normally.

How to Create a Series for Later Publishing

With the Publisher feature is activated, you will have an additional check box to allow creation of a Series in an “Unpublished” state. This will allow you to create posts tied to Series without the posts actually being published to your site yet. See below.

How to Publish or Unpublish a Series

When you “Publish” a Series, only posts already marked for publishing are now actually published and visible on the site; posts in draft status will stay as [unpublished] drafts although they still can be published at a later time. If you wish to Publish, there is an additional step. Clicking Publish will take you to the Publish Series screen which will allow you a chance to reorder the posts. Reordering posts sets the series_part custom field value which is used for sorting within some Organize Series template tags. You must then click “Publish Issue” on the right side of the screen to complete the process. Once you do this all posts in the Series will be published no matter what their previous status (draft, pending review, or published).