Content Moderation

Save content as draft, needs review, and more.

This guide demonstrates the content moderation feature, which is available from the “Content” menu in Drupal and when editing individual content items.

Content moderation allows users to save content in distinct states along a save-state spectrum to facilitate flexible publishing workflows. Each time you save content, Drupal creates a new revision (version) of that content. Each revision has a state (such as draft, needs review, or published) that indicates how close it is to being live. Only one revision of a content item can be live (published) at a time.

Saving content states

Step 1 highlights Save as dropdown menu in the settings panel on the right; step 2 highlights the save button at the top of interface.

To save content as a specific state:

In the Settings panel on the right*, open the Save as dropdown to select the desired state.
At the top of the page, select Save.

*If you don’t see the Settings panel, try enlarging your window or reducing your browser zoom until it appears.

Save-state spectrum

The content moderation feature currently supports five distinct states: draft, needs review, published, unpublished, and archived. The following table describes the status indicated by each state.

State	Status
draft	content in early-stage development
needs review	content in end-stage development
published	published content
unpublished	content that was formerly published but is no longer live
archived	content that was formerly published, is no longer live, and is maintained for admin reference and historical purposes

Workflow

Content moderation states are intended to be flexible. Design workflows that work best for your team’s unique needs. To get started, the following workflows are recommended.

Publishing new content

Consider a linear process from draft → needs review → published.

To make content live, save the revision as published.

Updating published content

Make changes live immediately

Save the revision as published.

Edit in the background while keeping the latest published revision live

Save the revision as draft (the published revision stays live).

Temporarily remove content while editing

Save the revision as unpublished.

When ready to publish, save the updated revision as published.

Sunsetting

To permanently remove content from the site by keep a record for admins, save the revision as archived.

Recommended workflows

Workflow diagram shows draft, to needs review, to published, to unpublished or archived or draft; unpublished to published. Unpublished and archived takes down published content.

All possible workflows

Workflow diagram shows draft, to needs review or published; needs review to draft or published; published to published or unpublished or archived or draft; unpublished to published or draft; archived to draft or published. Unpublished and archived takes down published content.

Role permissions

Users have distinct content moderation permissions based on their assigned role.

Role	Save as…draft	...needs review	...published	...unpublished	...archived
Contributor	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Publisher and Content Admin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Set up or change permissions

If your workflow requires that certain users have restricted permissions, please contact Evan Sanders, Digital Product Manager at evan@hms.harvard.edu to discuss.

Help us understand your use

Have you crafted a unique workflow using save-states for your team? Do you have ideas for improvements? We’d love to hear! Share your story with Evan Sanders, Digital Product Manager, at evan@hms.harvard.edu.