[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #39896: Customizer: Allow users to Draft changes before Publishing

[WordPress Trac]

#39896: Customizer: Allow users to Draft changes before Publishing
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 Reporter:  melchoyce    |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  4.9
Component:  Customize    |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |     Focuses:  ui
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Comment (by westonruter):

 To summarize our DM chat in Slack, we are OK with having scheduled
 changesets in ''with'' the linear flow. In other words, in core there will
 still only ever be one pending set of changes (a single
 `customize_changeset` post), whether those changes are drafted or
 scheduled for publishing. Once changes are scheduled for publishing, then
 the user would not be able to publish new changes in the Customizer until
 those scheduled changes go live. This would be the same behavior as
 scheduling a page for publishing, in that can't make parts of it published
 when it is that scheduled state. Changes made in the Customizer would
 autosave on top of a draft changeset and scheduled changeset alike.

 So we'd be moving forward with
 https://xd.adobe.com/view/95393ea0-df5e-4530-878b-5dfc39dcf59d/ but
 without the “Customization drafts” section.

 Replying to [comment:49 melchoyce]:
 > If we're concerned with letting people undo and redo changes, we should
 consider #21666.

 Yeah, that's a good point. The trash icon just seemed to me to be
 something that was missed, so that's why I suggested it. But there are
 other ways to workaround not having it as you suggested.

 The main thing left then to nail down is this part:

 > On reload/return to the Customizer, show some sort of "hey, you didn't
 save your changes last time, want to restore?", but otherwise load your
 last published version.

 I think this is what @JoshuaWold depicted in [attachment:Proposed 4.9
 release - Scenario 3.png]. Leaving the Customizer via closing it would be
 the way. If the user made changes but didn't save them, and the changes
 are in an `auto-draft` changeset, then the next time the user comes back
 they'd be prompted to load up the Customizer with that changeset applied.
 Otherwise, if they discard then the `auto-draft` is deleted.

 Otherwise, if the user previously saved or scheduled the changeset, then
 when they return to the Customizer the next time then that previous
 changeset is autoloaded into the Customizer for them to continue making
 changes. There would be ''no way'' for them to abandon the changes, other
 than to individually undo the changes the they had saved previously (if
 they can remember them?) To abandon those changes, we'd need to implement
 #21666, which possibly could be incorporated into the new panel, perhaps
 as a “Discard pending X changes”, where X is the number of settings in the
 changeset.

 Additionally, this new panel that contains the status, scheduling, and
 preview link can make use of the “forward arrow“ to go back as depicted in
 https://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/40278/customizer-theme-
 uploads-i1.png

 An additional change to the prototype would be that the list of statuses
 should be changed to be:

 • Publish
 • Draft
 • Schedule

 And the schedule area with the datetime picker should then only appear if
 “Schedule” is selected. There would not be a need to have an Edit button
 for scheduling. The fields could just always appear when Schedule is
 selected. Un-scheduling a changeset would consist of just switching to
 Draft or Publish statuses.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/39896#comment:50>
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