Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Jonathan Cameron · Post by **Jonathan Cameron** » Sat Nov 01, 2008 11:44 pm

PROBLEM: An author who creates an article on the front end is not able to edit the article after they press the save button. There are several reasons that this is a significant problem:

1. It is currently impossible for an author to fix a mistake or improve their article on the front end before it is approved for publication (once it has been saved the first time).

2. The front end article editor only has a 'Save' button. Since the author cannot edit the file after pressing the save button, that means that the author can never edit the article after it has been saved. Therefore the author can never edit an article when it has a valid ArticleID.

This is a significant limitation for article editor extensions (such as editor-xtd plugins) that need access to the article IDs. The implication here is that editor-xtd plugins can only insert into the content directly (eg for Readme markers), and cannot do anything with an article that needs an article ID. For instance, extensions that deal with items related to articles such as attachments, links, contacts, etc, are not currently supported (for front end authors) since they need to link back to the article using the article ID.

POSSIBLE FIXES:

A. Add an "Apply" button in the front end article editor that saves the article but leaves the author editing the article (which would then be saved and have an article ID). This fix requires updating the front-end editing form and providing suitable mechanisms to go back to editing the article.

B. Show unpublished articles for their authors in the front-end with appropriate colorizing. This capability already exists for administrators. It would only need to be extended to authors for their own articles. Note that this has the added advantage that the author can edit the article as many times as needed. This addresses both problems above. Fix A would still prevent the author from editing their own article after it has been saved once and the author leaves the article editor. This fix should be simple and only require a few lines of code. The ability to edit articles from the front end already exists since admin/editors can currently do that.

NOTE: Having both solutions A and B together would be best and provide the most flexibility to front-end authors.

IMPACT ON ADMIN:
* None of the items directly affect the back end

IMPACT ON USERS:
* Normal (non-author) users will see no changes.
* For front-end authors, the main impact will be that the front-end article editor will show an extra [Apply] button and their unpublished articles will be shown (with special highlighting). There would be no significant operational changes.

ISSUES:
* An issue that should be considered is whether users should be allowed to edit their own articles after they have been published. This is primarily a policy question and may be different from site to site so it might be worth considering some mechanism to enable enforcing the policy.

-Jonathan

Antonimo · Post by **Antonimo** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:12 pm

I am fully in favour of this facility

froofie · Post by **froofie** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 7:41 pm

My solution for now is to install the "camelcitycontent2" extension which will allow a user to view their submitted articles before and after publishing.

It will also allow them to edit the article before its published.

Authors editing published articles without approval is an issue I'm currently looking to resolve to and will post here if I find a suitable work around for others to use.

Antonimo · Post by **Antonimo** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 7:58 pm

Thanks froofie,

Will look at the extension you propose and continue to follow this thread.

wlrdq · Post by **wlrdq** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:13 am

@froofie,

Did you ever find a good resolution to stop authors from editing published articles? I'm trying to help someone on another thread that is looking for a resolution to the same issue:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 7#p1857757

Thanks!

FrankA3 · Post by **FrankA3** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:51 am

Any advance on this? Camelcitycontent seems to have disappeared from extensions and the web and I still need this facility.

http://docs.joomla.org/How_do_authors_f ... created%3F

wlrdq · Post by **wlrdq** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 3:52 am

Is the issue just that the author won't know how to get back to the article that they wrote? If so, I could probably whip up a quick view for the content component to display published and unpublished articles for an author. Let me know if this sounds like it would work for you.

daithio · Post by **daithio** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:48 am

wlrdq: That would be neat. I want front-end users to be able to maintain a set of unpublished articles as they write them, then publish each when it is complete. They need a list of all their unpublished articles irrespective of section and category assigned.

wlrdq · Post by **wlrdq** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:20 am

This is a very simple start to a view that will list links to all articles written by the user that is logged in:

author.zip

Unzip it to the following folder on your site:
.../components/com_content/views/

You should have the following files after you unzip it:
.../components/com_content/views/author/

index.html
metadata.xml
view.html.php

.../components/com_content/views/author/tmpl/

index.html
default.php
default.xml

Then when you go in to create a new menu item, you should have an Author layout under Articles.

This is very, very simple code (20 lines), so you should be able to add to default.php to change it how you like. If you need any help styling it or adding anything, feel free to ask.

Let me know how it goes.

Antonimo · Post by **Antonimo** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:40 am

@wlrdq,

Thanks! Will install later to test and then provide feedback.

daithio · Post by **daithio** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 5:26 pm

Thanks. Works great! One small idea: is it possible to place the published or unpublished icon against each item in the author's article list. As it is, I need to open each to see which article is published and which is not.

Also (and here is where I show my newbie status), when the author creates an article that they do not want published right away, or even submitted for approval, the only way is to set Start Publication to a future date. There is no "do not publish yet" or "Do not submit yet" option. Is that a correct assumption or do I need to read the manual? :-)

Antonimo · Post by **Antonimo** » Fri Jan 08, 2010 7:08 am

Hi,

I have tested with my latest installation of Joomla.

A couple of observations / queries:- is it possible to display the Section and Category for each article, or to organize them after Section and Category?

Does anybody know how to get this to work with sh404SEF?
Answer - By creating a custom redirect in the sh404SEF URL Manager

This is a very interesting idea and I would like to do some more work with it to extend its capabilities.

The Joomla! Forum™

Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end

Re: Let authors edit their own unpublished articles on front end