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What is: Post Status

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Post status allows users to set a workflow status for a post in WordPress. There are 8 default statuses that WordPress uses. They are published, future, draft, pending, trash, auto-draft, and inherit. A post may also have a “new” status if it was just created and hasn’t had any previous status. WordPress themes and plugins can also define custom post statuses for more complex websites. These statuses allows users to organize their posts in the admin panel. They are especially useful for sites with multiple authors or a complicated editorial process.

Post status

Some things that post status allows is for users to work on an article without publishing it and saving it as a draft. This way they can go back later and finish it. It also allows users to schedule posts which gives the post a status of “future”, or make a post private. Attachments have a post status of “inherit”. For multi author blogs the “pending” status can be useful as contributors can submit posts for review prior to publishing.

It is expected that in the future versions of WordPress there will be more editorial controls added into the post-status functionality. Right now users can extend this functionality by using plugins, such as Edit Flow.

Additional Reading

Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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