In OpenCities, you can schedule pages and files to publish or deactivate on specific dates. You can also schedule review notifications, so content authors can reevaluate content and ensure it's still relevant. These schedule date fields are in the Settings tab of the page or file.
Firstly, let's go through the difference between archiving or deleting content and deactivating or rolling back content.
- Archive: the page or file will be removed from the live site and the site tree or Files Library. The content will be stored in an archive and can be viewed or restored later. You'll need to repoint or remove any inbound links before you're able to archive content.
- Delete: the page or file is permanently removed from your site, with no option to restore it. You'll need to repoint or remove any inbound links before you delete the content.
- Deactivate: the page or file is no longer live on your site, but saved in your site tree or Files Library. When you publish a new version of the content, you can choose to deactivate previous versions. Any inbound links to the deactivated content will break.
- Roll Back: the page or file is no longer live on your site, but still saved in your site tree or Files Library. When you select Roll Back, the content will revert to the last active version; if there are no previous active versions, the content will deactivate entirely. Any inbound links to the deactivated content will break.
How to schedule content
Schedule dates can be specified in the Settings tab:
- Go to the Settings tab of the page or file you want to schedule. If the content has been published before, you'll need to Update it first.
- Under Schedule, you'll see a date and time field for the following:
- Publish date: the date on which the content will publish and go live
- Review date: a date on which a notification to review the content will be emailed to the Page Owner.
- Deactivate date: the date published content will roll back and be deactivated. If there is a previous active version, the content will revert to that version and stay live.
- Fill out the necessary dates and times.
- Save and Publish your content.
Default settings for content scheduling
This task is for users with the following roles: OC Developer and OC System Administrator.
There are only a few content type settings relevant to content scheduling; you can find them by going to More > Content Types > the content type. These are the relevant settings:
- Auto review days: set an automatic review notification date for when content authors publish this content type without setting one on the page. The system will use the publish date plus this specified number to set the review date. Set this to 0 to disable this feature.
- Auto deactivate days: set an automatic deactivate notification date for when content authors publish this content type without setting one on the page. The system will use the publish date plus this specified number to set the deactivate date. Set this to 0 to disable this feature.
- Auto deactivate previous versions: check this box to set this content type to deactivate previous versions when content authors publish a new version of this content type. If they have permissions, content authors can override this setting as they publish content. This setting will already be turned on for most content types.
- Retain scheduling: check this box to automatically retain specified schedule dates when a new version of a content type is created. If this isn't enabled, any scheduling dates content authors previously added will not carry over to the new version of the page once they select Update. Content authors will need to set the schedule dates again. Please note that the Retain scheduling feature will also retain automatic dates set by the Auto review days and Auto deactivate days settings above.