[Plugin: Edit Flow] Custom statuses create timestamp problem

I’ve noticed this as well and have the same problem with posts being published with the wrong date because of it. I’m using Edit Flow 0.6.2 in WordPress 3.1

Not AFAIK. I’m now using WordPress 3.1.1 and Edit Flow 0.6.3 and still have this problem.

Hi Daniel,

I tested several times and here are my findings:

1. Switching between different statuses e.g. from Pending Review (which is WP default status) to Pending Publication now does not show “Published on:….” and instead just like how I think it should be which is “Publish Immediately” (since the post has not been published). This is a good thing!

However, after several hours have passed, I decided to publish a few “test” articles in Pending Publication status and found that those carried and displayed the timestamp at the time when I switched them from Pending Review to Pending Publication. I thought I made some mistakes but repeated tests conclusively showed the same result. So all I can say is that moving articles from a WP statuses like Draft or Pending Review to Pending Publication or any other custom statuses controlled by Edit Flow still automatically affixes a timestamp to the post – and when you pulbish the post it carries the old affixed timestamp not the current one.

2. So I thought maybe I just deal with WP statuses ONLY like changing current drafts from Draft to Pending Review, waited for a couple hours and then published them. The result in this case showed correctly the current timestamp at the time of publication; thus, based on my testing, I assume using the WP statuses won’t cause this issue.

3. Then I decided to do a bit research on the internet and found out that you can actually change the meta-box or UI of the statuses concerning the timestamp by messing around and changing this code in wp-admin/includes/meta-boxes.php:

From this:

} else { // draft, 1 or more saves, date specified
		$stamp = __('Publish on: <b>%1$s</b>');
	}
	$date = date_i18n( $datef, strtotime( $post->post_date ) );

To this:

} else { // draft, 1 or more saves, date specified
		$stamp = __('Publish <b>immediately</b>');
       $date = date_i18n( $datef, strtotime( $post->post_date ) );

and you would also get the “Publish Immediately” for every status. However, the problem still persists as soon as you switch from a WP status Draft or Pending Review to any of Edit Flow’s custom status the timestamp get affixed immediately and will be registered as the published timestamp at the time of publication.

So in a nutshell, even though the fix shows “Publish Immediately” but the timestamp still gets affixed to the post as soon as you change from Draft or Pending Review to any of the Edit Flow’s custom statuses.

Sorry for the long post but hopefully this helps you to understand and find a solution. Thanks so much for your time and patience.

David

Hi Daniel,

I still got the timestamp affixed automatically when changing to any of the Edit Flow’s custom statuses even thought it shows “Publish Immediately” versus Published On:…; and that timestamp is recorded as published date when publishing. I ran several tests for the last couple hours and got the same results.