[wp-hackers] RE: Static content plugin (and sticky/hidden... post_status)

[David Chait]

Strangely enough, something in my selecting 'digest mode' has made it so
that I haven't received ANY messages since I signed up.  So I'm jumping
into some threads a bit late.  Better late than never... ;)

> > Post status makes sense to me because each of these are (as far as I can
> > see) mutually exclusive. If it's a draft nobody can see it, if it's
> > published it shows up normally, if it's sticky it shows up on top, and
> > if it's static it doesn't show up unless you specifically link to it. It
> > also seems to me that this way we wouldn't be misusing categories: if a
> > post is sticky, that's a property of the post, not a classification.
>
> Yeah, I like post_status myself.  As you say, there might still be a
> need for hidden categories.  If we do both, I'm wondering if we'd like
> to adopt a consist terminology between the two, such as standalone, or
> just go with static and hidden.  I'm really not too fond of static,
> since it can be confused with real static content, but I'm not sure that
> standalone is any more clear.  Anyway, it seems like standalone, static,
> and hidden are all intending the same thing.  I'm just trying to pin
> down usages.

You know, I'm far enough from a release that I can't remember what was in
the real code, and what I've hacked in! ;)

I have post_status with 4 options: publish, draft, private, sticky.  I guess
when people say 'hidden' they mean 'standalone' or 'static'?  I agree with
the above evaluation that post_status is the right place for these sorts of
state.

Well, as long as options all seem properly mutually exclusive, they should
all
be post_status values.  HOWEVER, I have used 'sticky' on what I have in
an otherwise 'static' category (my about page if anyone is looking...), in
which case maybe 'static' really is some kind of categorization option.

But, I think categories should be categories, and not 'bastardized' for
other status indicators that really want to be 'promoted' to full options.
As it is, I have a 'post_type' field separate from categories, as I wanted
an orthogonal post type specification to the categorization of posts
(i.e., news, preview, review, links, files, op-ed, etc...).

-d