Have you ever accidentally published a post before it was ready? Maybe you clicked “Publish” when you meant to click “Save”? And now this half-finished post is on your RSS feed and AAAARGGHGH!! It’s frustrating. It’s happened to me a few times, and it sucks. So I put together this simple FREE plugin.
Publish Confirmation is a plugin that serves one and only one purpose. When you press the “Publish” button, a little dialog box appears and says, “Are you SURE you want to publish this post?” You can either click OK (and your post will be published) or CANCEL (and your post post will not be published and you’ll return).
And that’s it! Wanna see a screenshot?
Here’s a screenshot:
And that’s all it does! See? What’d I tell ya! Pretty simple! (And yes, I realize that “OK” is not the correct answer for a yes/no question…)
And here’s a video (installation and overview):
Note: I didn’t craft the code for this plugin. I found it on a WordPress forum post here when I was searching for something similar. I tweaked the code a tiny bit and did everything to get it in the official WordPress database.
The plugin is simple and unobtrusive, so give it a test run and see how you like it!
{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
Downloading it now. It’s great to see that you identified a problem and instead of getting frustrated by it, you worked to develop a solution! I’ll be sure to tell you how it works out for me :)
Great! Thanks, Jay!
Yeah I have definitely ran into a few issues with rss feeds and error ridden posts. Your WordPress plugin looks like a solid solution, appreciate it.
Awesome, I hope it works well for you. Thanks for commenting!
My challenge is NOT have to have Wordpress eat my post before I finish it! I have no idea why my auto-save makes sure to save things from 94 years ago instead of my last draft…so now I manually hit ‘SAVE ALREADY BLAST YE!’ every 4 minutes or so.
It helps. Really.
Hahah, yeah I’ve definitely run into that problem before too, Barbara! Not fun!
Hi Tristan
Thanks for letting us know about this. It is so good to know if I do hit publish before I really want to then I can now retrieve my post. Thanks for sharing.
Patricia Perth Australia
My pleasure! Thanks, Patricia!
Hey Tristan, You’re so talented. I’ll be sure to spread the word about this. Great job, thanks!
Nice plug-in though for folks like me that publish via Windows Live Writer, it wouldn’t come necessary. Cheers. Retweeted.
Huh, I’ll have to look into Live Writer. Thanks for the retweet, Udegbunam!
Ummm… nope; can’t say I’ve ever accitentally published anything.
((He’s SUCH a liar! Don’t believe that… he did it just yesterday! He NEEDS this plug-in!))
Hahaha. Nice one, Allan! The last time I did it was last week, and then I figured there had to be a way to keep this from happening (but there wasn’t), so I made this plugin. Never again will it happen!
So far, this accidentally publishing a post has never happened to me, but yes, it can be a pain.
Thanks for the link and the video review Tristan.
I will definitely try.
Really? Man… It’s happened to me probably… 10 times? You must be doing something right, then!
Really cool plugin. I’ve done this many a-times myself.
I am slowly getting more and more into the idea of writing the content outside of wordpress, then put it in there to just format and put the pictures in there haha.
Great post! :-)
To life,
-Gregory
Gregory, I try to do the same, too (write mostly out of WP and then paste in), but I still always manage to screw things up…
Tristan!
Brilliant man.
WIll contact you shortly because I want to chat with you further re: this
Impressed mate – very impressed.
Of course, being the perfectionist that I am, I never hit publish before a final check, but this plugin is still good to have, espeically if you have a million readers (iuf you have like 100 you can publish, go ‘shit’ quickly edit and noone notices LOL)
Check out the commentluv post – its awesome! ;)
PS: notice you have maxblogpress magnet, how you finding it? increase?
It’s actually not MaxBlogPress, it’s called Qoate Newsletter Signup, and it’s FREE. I can’t really say if it’s increasing my opt-ins because I’ve had it installed pretty much since the beginning. I can say, though, that the majority of my opt-ins (probably around 2/3) come from my Popup Domination thing. I think the rest are split between my sidebar and the comments check box.
Hi Tristan,
My first visit to your blog and I like it already! This has happened to me so many times. Often it’s when I want to Save so I can do a preview and it’s published. What I started doing was to put the title in last as I believe it will not publish without a title. This plug-in will be soooo much better! Thank you for discovering it and tweaking for the rest of us. I’ll be downloading it and give you a feedback.
Yvonne
After reading your comment, Yvonne, I wondered if a post WOULD publish without a title. I just tried it on my dummy blog. It posted! All the more reason to download the plugin, right? :) Thanks for the comment!
Since you were kind enough to leave your mark on my blog, Tristan, I just had to stroll on over here and give your blog a look-see. :)
Blogging Bookshelf is pretty darn cool. I like your commenting policy and I can’t wait to read your freebie – don’t want to be planning my blog’s funeral any time soon!
Thanks for the safety valve plugin,
Melanie
Thank you for commenting, Melanie, and thanks for the complement!
Hi Mel
Just adding Tristan’s plugin to my sites – I can stop living in fear of hitting that big blue button by mistake.
Tristan,
Hey, it’s good to meet a fellow plug-in author. I just d/l it and checked the code. Damn simple! Well done. I love simple.
If you get a chance, check out my free plug-in Spicy Blogroll at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/spicy-blogroll/ . It is a little more complicated but, like yours, based on a simple idea someone else published (under GPL2) and I added a few tweaks, enhancements and a whole new admin settings page that has to be seen to be believed – well I think so anyway.
I see you do not have a blogroll published on your site. Maybe after you see this little baby in action it might change your mind. But then, when has a piece of code changed anyone’s mind :-) ?
I need to write a post on the value of publishing a blogroll I think…
Cheers, Michael.
Thanks for the complement, Michael! I’m not gonna lie, I really don’t see a whole lot of value in blogrolls. Please, enlighten me! I’ll be sure to check out your plugin. I appreciate you commenting!
Hey Tristan:
I just downloaded the plugin and I will install it and give it a go tonight.
This seems like it will save many bloggers the embarrassment of publishing their post before it is actually finished.
It’s so simple bu so effective.
Great job!
- Rick
Thanks, Rick! Be sure to let me know how it goes (and rate the plugin at WordPress.org, too!).
Great plugin, but may I ask a question ? Why we need this ?
Hmmm… I think one of two things is happening here: 1) You didn’t read the post, or 2) This is a spam comment.
I already reading the post but I think when you writing it, you must to focus on it, after finish, then publish.
I always writing article with wordpad and just copy it to wordpress and public when it ready.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, then! Writing it in Wordpad is a great idea, Tony. But I know a lot of people don’t do this, so that’s where I think people would find this plugin useful. Thanks for commenting, Tony!
Hi Tristan! Ok now I don’t feel so bad because I thought it was a just a newbie mistake when I did this the other day. This is a cool plugin that I’m going to try out asap. Thank you!
Yeah, it happens! Thanks for downloading and leaving a comment!
This is a great quick fix to a pretty annoying problem, I literally just did this with a post on Saturday night. To say that I was slightly irritated doesn’t put it into perspective.
Good, I’m glad I’m not the only one that does this! Be sure to rate the plugin at WordPress.org!
What a handy tool Tristan:) I am going to download it now. Finally no more unfinished articles posted, Wheey!:)
Thanks
Exactly! This has happened to me several times before and I always feel like an idiot when it happens. Glad you find it useful, too!
Just downloaded this great plugin, haven’t even tried it yet but want to say thanks for handling this oh-so-human mistake! My new (and it’s my first) WP blog is going great but in just 5 posts I have already prematurely published 2, by a too-quick hit on the button. And it really is instant – when I knew my mistake (within maybe 0.5 seconds!) I quit Safari at once but it was already too late.
Shame on WP for not making this a standard feature!
Damn this is good plugin, sometime my mistake i click publish button instead of draft or preview button. Thanks mate
thanks
Tristan, aloha. Saw this when you posted it and now that I am moving to WP will definitely use it. Thx so much. Wasn’t that a great idea of Dino’s re neglected or underappreciated posts?
Enjoy a wonderful weekend. Aloha. Janet
Simple, but a really useful plug in.
It always seems a bit of a flaw on behalf of wordpress that “preview” and “publish” are next to each other and look more or less the same!
I’ve done that once or twice…. Also scheduled more than one post per day by accident of course.
Thanks for the tip, Tristan!
Ana
this is a very good plugin. They should have a plugin like that for some people leaving dumb or offensive comments. *Submit* – ‘Are you sure you wanna say that?’ would be effective. Like I write an email, keep it in the outbox, and then after I cooled down, I edit and post it then.
Good idea?
Hi Tristan!
Simple but great plug-in! Thanks for sharing it with us.
I published a post that I was preparing as a guest post the other day, by mistake. So this looked like a good idea.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t just pop up when I click the actual “Publish” button but also when I update existing posts. Result: I get used to clicking “OK” without thinking – and I’m back where I started, but with an extra step every time I save a post. So I deactivated it.
I realise that it may not be possible to make it active only on first-time publish, but if you could, I’d reactivate the plugin.
I figured out the solution to this myself. All you need to do is test for the name of the button:
if (publish !== null && publish.value == “Publish”) …
Works like a charm, and now does what I was looking for without being annoying when I’m updating.
Please feel free to use this.
Thank for sharing it :)
Hi Tristan, can you tell me if Publish Confirmation runs well on WordPress 3.3.1? Thanks
Sure does. I’m running it on all of my WordPress blogs, all of which have been updated to 3.3.1.
Thanks! Will try it out.
Great idea Tristan.
Only hit that big blue Publish button by mistake a few times, but it is so annoying when you do.
This function should be built in to WordPress.
Thanks for taking the time to give us all a solution.
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