I am trying to:
Make an Archive privately published while I am working on it. I clicked on the Document tab in the block editor where one normally configures this setting.
I expected to see:
The typical Public/Private configuration options available on Posts and Pages
Instead, I got:
The Document tab was blank and after half a second it automatically switches to the Block tab. See the attached screenshot showing the blank section before it switches to Block.
Is this the correct behavior? What is the preferred way to create a Private Archive?
Hi, yes it's the expected behavior because you make all your adjustments directly on the WordPress Archive block. There's no Privately published option for WordPress Archives in Toolset, but you could use Draft mode. Up at the top of the screen there's a "Switch to Draft" link that would allow you to do that.
Ok, that makes sense. So switching to draft mode was the first thing I tried, but here's my problem:
- I made a custom post type
- I made a field group for that custom post type
- I made a content template for that custom post type
- I made some instances of the custom post type
When the content template is in draft mode, if I visit an instance of the custom post type and click it's permalink to preview, or click the preview button, the content template is not visible on the front end and the cpt instance looks empty. This is totally understandable because the content template is in draft mode and unreadable by the cpt instance. I feel like the suggestion would be to use the live preview on the content template page. This live preview works well for custom field groups, but it doesn't interpret shortcodes from other plugins and doesn't use the front end css.
So essentially there is no way to privately develop how a content template will look short of duplicating all the work on a staging site and managing the transfers with Import/Export, which could get hairy if the Import/Export functionality duplicates rather than overwrites. Maybe I can find a plugin to restrict Archive access to logged in users...
If you have any suggestions I super appreciate it but otherwise we can resolve this issue.
One more detail I forgot to share (I think I was conflating Content Templates and Archives in my previous post):
When I try your suggestion to set the Archive page to Draft, it's still visible on the front end for non-logged in users. I tried clearing the cache, no effect. Any idea why this happens? Thanks for your time.
Let me ask my 2nd tier team if Draft mode is supposed to disconnect the archive from the post type. In my local tests, I see the same thing you see. Even in draft mode, the archive design I created is still applied to the archive unless I disconnect the archive in Loop Settings. I'll let you know what I find out.
It looks like the Draft mode isn't being respected, and our developers need to take this under consideration. We have escalated the problem to the developers for resolution in a future release. It seems that you must disconnect the WP Archive block from all content, rather than relying on Draft mode.
I'll keep you posted here as I receive more information about that.
Excellent, I appreciate your support. Thanks!
Hi, I have a quick status update for you -
Our developers have informed me this issue will be fixed in the next releases of Blocks and Views. Toolset's WP Archives in "Draft" status will no longer be applied to the assigned archive page and archive loop. I don't have a release schedule available just yet, but I suspect the releases will be relatively soon.
Regarding your concern about a workflow for privately developing a WP Archive, one approach is to use a custom code snippet to apply an unassigned WP Archive to some archive temporarily while developing that unassigned WP Archive. For example, the wpv_filter_force_wordpress_archive API will allow you to programmatically choose an unassigned WP Archive and apply that instead of the actual assigned WP Archive. You could set up the snippet so that it's only applied when the current User is an admin ( or only your specific User ID, or some other User restriction ) and the current page is the WP Archive for some specific term or post type. In this case, front-end CSS would be maintained and 3rd-party shortcodes would also be interpreted correctly.
Documentation for this API is available here: https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/views-filters/#wpv_filter_force_wordpress_archive
Let me know if you have questions about this approach, and I'll keep you posted here as I receive more information about the next release.
Thanks so much! That works great. I appreciate your support.
Hello, we are in the process of releasing Blocks 1.2 to Users now. If the automatic update is not immediately visible, you can try to force the update by going to wp-admin > Plugins > Add New, then click the "Commercial" tab. In the Toolset area of this tab, click "Check for Updates" to refresh and trigger the automatic update. If the automatic updater process does not find the latest version, you can certainly find Blocks 1.2 available for download at https://toolset.com/account/downloads. Download the new version, then deactivate and delete the previous version of Blocks in your wp-admin > Plugins page. After the update, please test the "Draft" status of an archive and let me know if the Draft version is visible on the front-end of the site.
