Rethinking the Calendar, May 2020

Introducing React and block editor components to Edit Flow provides us with an opportunity to step back and explore how we think and adapt to the changing nature of editorial workflow.

Over the next several releases of Edit Flow, we’ll focus on re-evaluating and redeveloping features and modules to better support a modern content and editorial landscape, starting with the Calendar.

The calendar is a convenient week-by-week or month-by-month view into your content. Quickly see which stories are on track to being published on time, and which will need extra effort.

As it stands today, the calendar is meant to provide editors and content managers with an understanding of the cadence and tempo of content production at all stages of the editorial process. But this isn’t being clearly communicated.

What does it mean to move unpublished content around the calendar? If I move a piece of in-progress content on the calendar, that doesn’t schedule it for publishing. It represents the possibility that this content might be published on that day. This gets mixed in with content that is actually scheduled (and will publish), along with content that is already published.

This is a lot of context to digest when looking at the calendar, and it seems like there’s an opportunity to rethink how the calendar could be re-developed to enable editors and content managers to quickly grasp the fluctuating state of content being produced. Is a conventional calendar even the best mechanism with which to display this information?

If you have use Edit Flow or have a passing interest in editorial workflow, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please reach out here in the comments, on Github or in the support forums.

Thanks!
-Connor

v0.9.6: Wayside/Back in Time

Hello! A new release of Edit Flow is now available.

We’re giving the block editor first class support in Edit Flow and to start we’ve re-implemented the Calendar filters to use block editor components. Let us know what you think! We’ll be re-implementing and enhancing Edit Flow modules with Gutenberg over the next few releases, so look out for changes to come!

We’ve also fixed an issue users were encountering in WP 5.4 with a non-English language set when clicking the save button after hovering over it for a period of time.

Stay tuned as we continue to work through our backlog and improve Edit Flow.

Thanks!

How to Update?

You can update directly from your WordPress Dashboard (Dashboard > Updates), or download the release from the Plugin Directory or the GitHub repo.

v0.9.5: All the Best

Hello! A new release of Edit Flow is now available.

Previewing posts by another author is working again, thanks to a great contribution from @mallorydxw (a first time contributor)!

A number of problems with slugs should now be ironed out, and a number of tests have been introduced to catch any future issues.

Stay tuned as we continue to work through our backlog and improve Edit Flow.

Thanks!

How to Update?

You can update directly from your WordPress Dashboard (Dashboard > Updates), or download the release from the Plugin Directory or the GitHub repo.

v0.9.4

Hello! A new release of Edit Flow is now available.

Filtering custom statuses is working again, thanks to a great contribution from @jsit (a first time contributor)!

@ryelle, another first time contributor, made a great fix that solved a conflict with a PWA plugin.

And lastly, we had some great contributions from @WPprodigy in the form of bug fixes and improvements, which are putting Edit Flow on the right foot moving forward.

Stay tuned as we continue to work through our backlog and improve Edit Flow.

Thanks!

How to Update?

You can update directly from your WordPress Dashboard (Dashboard > Updates), or download the release from the Plugin Directory or the GitHub repo.

v0.9.3

Hey All! A new maintenance release (v0.9.3) is now available. The release includes some fixes for datepicker localization, notification statuses and some errors/warnings. For a full list of changes, check out the release notes.

Be on the lookout for another release in the coming weeks as we continue to work through our backlog.

And thanks to everyone who contributed to this version!

How to Update?

You can update directly from your WordPress Dashboard (Dashboard > Updates), or download the release from the Plugin Directory or the GitHub repo.

v0.9.1

We just pushed out a long overdue maintenance release (v0.9.1) with a collection of bug fixes. The release includes some compatibility fixes with the Block and Classic editors. We’ve also tested the plugin with WordPress 5.3 in preparation for the upcoming release. For a full list of changes, you can read the release notes.

Expect another bug fix release in a few weeks as we work through our backlog of issues.

And thanks to everyone who contributed to this version!

How to Update?

You can update directly from your WordPress Dashboard (Dashboard > Updates), or download the release from the Plugin Directory or the GitHub repo.

v0.8.2: The check is in the mail

Happy to let you know that v0.8.2 is out and available from WordPress.org! This is a minor bug fix and maintenance release that introduced a number of fixes and improvements you can read about here (so many props!).

Let us know what you’d like to see in the next release of Edit Flow in the comments below, the support forums or on Github.

As always, Edit Flow is looking for contributors to help improve and maintain the plugin!

 

v0.8.1: Fixin’ bugs

We’re happy to tell you that v0.8.1 is out and available from WordPress.org! This is a minor bug fix and maintenance release that:

  • introduces a default title on the calendar for posts without one
  • stops posts moving days in the calendar when updated
  • adds German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese translations
  • adds several caching enhancements
  • includes some improvements to plugin internals
  • fixes an issue with users who’ve left blogs
  • adds Composer support

 

v0.8: Dashboard Notepad, Calendar Improvements, and more!

Happy New Year! We wanted to send out a quick update announcing the new features in Edit Flow v0.8.

New Feature: Dashboard Notepad

  • A simple, plain text notepad that allows admins and editors to leave notes that are visible to all users who have access to the dashboard. This is useful for leaving instructions, notes, or important announcements.

Dashboard Notepad

Enhancement: Post Management in Calendar

  • Quickly create posts or pitches by double clicking a day in the calendar.
  • Drag and drop posts to reschedule them to a different day.
  • Click on a post to see metadata and quickly access Edit, Trash, Preview or Follow buttons.

calendar-hires

Enhancement: Subscribe to your editorial calendar

  • Subscribe to your calendar in iCal or Google Cal by enabling subscriptions in Calendar settings, and grabbing the secret URL in “Screen Options” on the calendar page.

calsubscription

Localization Updates

  • New Russian localization by to te-st.ru.
  • Updated Japanese localization by naokomc.
  • Updated Dutch localization by kardotim.

Other improvements:

  • Post Subscribers: Adding or removing subscribers to a post is now saved via AJAX, which means you can update post subscribers without clicking “Save Post.”
  • Following posts: New “Follow” links for posts across the Manage Posts, Calendar, or Story Budget page allows editors to easily follow or unfollow posts without needing to open the post.
  • Editorial Metadata dates: Ability to assign both a date and time to the editorial metadata’s date field, which helps clarify deadlines.
  • Email alerts: Scheduled publication time added to relevant email notifications.

For more details on improvements, bugfixes, and contributors, please visit the changelog and the Edit Flow development blog

You can follow along Edit Flow development on Github. If you’re interested in contributing, the Issues page is a great place to start!

And finally, the following folks did some tremendous work helping with the release of Edit Flow v0.8: azizurbbrookscojennindanielbachhuberdrrobotnikFstopjkoviskardotimkeoshi mattoperrymbijonnaokomcnatebot,nickdaughertypaulgibbsrgalindo05te-st.ruwillvanwazerziz.

v0.7.5: Enhancements and bugfixes

A couple of localizations, some small enhancements, and another laundry bag of fixes:

  • New Japanese localization thanks to naokomc.
  • New French localization thanks to boris-hocde.
  • Allow custom post statuses to be completely disabled for a post type, preventing situations where ‘draft’ posts could disappear when the draft status was deleted.
  • Better implementation of the hack we have to employ for editable slugs in the post edit screen. Thanks cojennin for the assist.
  • Editorial metadata names can now be up to 200 characters (instead of 20 previously). Props cojennin.
  • Bug fix: Load modules on ‘init’ so the strings associated with each class can be properly translated.
  • Bug fix: Pagination functional again when filtering to a post type.
  • Bug fix: Pre-PHP 5.2.9 array_unique() compatibility.
  • Bug fix: Respect the timezone when indicating which day is Today.
  • Bug fix: Calendar should work for all post types, regardless of which are supposed to be added to it.

See Github for all of the closed issues.

Also of note: edit(orial) flow is coming to core for WordPress 3.6! This will mostly be bug fixes around custom statuses, but I’m hoping to release Edit Flow v0.8 around the same time. Let me know if you’d like to help with contributing.

As always, please hit us with questions, feature requests, and bug reports in the WordPress.org forums.