This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Strapi
We're excited to introduce two new features in Strapi 5 that make managing content easier for you. With Draft & Publish and Content History, you have more control over every step of your content’s lifecycle.
Draft & Publish lets you work on drafts without risking accidental publishing. You can make changes, save your progress, and only publish when you're ready. This keeps your work safe and gives you the freedom to experiment.
Content History is like a time machine for your content. It lets you go back and restore previous versions whenever you need. Whether you’re fixing a mistake or just want to see how things looked before, this feature gives you peace of mind.
We built these tools to help you work faster and with fewer headaches. Strapi 5 is here to make content management simple, so you can focus on building and creating without any worry.
Introducing Draft & Publish in Strapi 5
Creating, managing, and publishing content involves several steps that can be tricky to navigate. With the new Draft & Publish feature in Strapi 5, we're simplifying this process, giving you more control over how and when your content goes live.
In previous versions, an entry was either in a draft or a published state. This was fine for small, fast iterations, but was less effective for larger, more complex content updates involving multiple people. We listened to your feedback, and Draft and Publish is our response.
Now, content exists in two states: Draft and Published. The interface separates these into distinct tabs, which might seem like a small change, but it’s a game-changer for managing complex content workflows. You can now work on a draft without any fear of it going live accidentally or losing your work by forgetting to hit publish. Once the draft is ready, you can publish it with a single click. No need to switch between different tools or versions—everything happens in one place.
Whether you're working on a fresh piece or revising an existing one, Draft & Publish provides a streamlined, error-free experience for content managers and marketers.
Manage Content Across Its Entire Lifecycle
With Draft & Publish, managing content is now more intuitive. You can handle content at every stage of its lifecycle, whether it's a draft, ready for publishing, or marked for modification. This feature reduces the risk of publishing errors and makes it easier for teams to collaborate.
Three Clear Content Statuses
In Strapi 5, every piece of content falls into one of three statuses:
- Draft: The content has never been published and is still a work in progress.
- Modified: The content has been published before, but recent changes have been saved as a draft. These changes aren’t live yet, offering you a chance to refine them before the next publication.
- Published: The content is live and visible to your audience. No pending draft changes are saved.
This status is displayed at the top of the entry in the Content Manager, giving you a clear overview of where each piece of content stands. This clarity is especially useful for larger teams, ensuring that everyone knows the current state of each document without guesswork.
Separate Draft and Published Tabs
To make content editing more straightforward, the new interface introduces two tabs:
- Draft Tab: This is your workspace. Here, you can make changes to your content, save them as drafts, and continue editing until you're ready to publish. This setup allows you to experiment and iterate without affecting the live version of your content.
- Published Tab: This read-only tab shows the currently published version of your content. It's a snapshot of what's live on your website or application, giving you a reference point as you work on new drafts.
Having these two tabs means you can compare drafts to published content easily, reducing the chances of overwriting or losing important information. It also helps you keep your workflow organized, especially when working on complex content updates that require multiple revisions.
Flexible Publishing and Unpublishing Options
With Draft & Publish, you have complete control over when and how your content goes live. After making changes to a draft, you have several options:
- Publish: Click the "Publish" button to make the draft live. The content of both Draft and Published tabs will match, ensuring that the latest version is what your audience sees.
- Save: Not ready to publish yet? Save your changes as a draft for later. This option allows you to refine and iterate until you're satisfied with the result.
- Discard Changes: If you want to revert to the last saved state, simply discard your changes.
You can also unpublish content. If you decide that a published document should no longer be live, you can unpublish it with a few clicks. This action moves the content back into draft status, giving you the option to keep the latest draft, replace it with the published version, or discard it entirely.
Bulk Actions and Scheduling
Strapi 5 makes it easy to manage multiple entries at once. With the bulk publishing and unpublishing feature, you can select several entries and publish or unpublish them simultaneously. This is especially helpful when working with a large dataset, like a product catalog or a blog archive, allowing you to streamline your workflow.
If you’re managing content across different locales, Strapi 5’s Internationalization feature—now part of the core rather than a separate plugin—ensures that bulk actions apply only to the selected locale, giving you granular control over your publication strategy.
You can also schedule publications through the Release feature. This allows you to plan and set content to publish automatically at a specific date and time. The scheduling functionality is perfect for time-sensitive content like promotional campaigns or announcements, ensuring that your content goes live exactly when needed.
Enhanced Collaboration with Draft & Publish
Draft & Publish integrates seamlessly with Strapi's Content Internationalization and Review Workflow features. Whether you’re working on a multilingual project or coordinating with a team to review changes, this feature supports your workflow. You can decide to publish content in one locale or across all locales simultaneously, offering flexibility for your publication strategy.
Best of all, Draft & Publish is free for all Strapi 5 users, adding a new layer of control to your content creation process without any extra cost.
Start Using Draft & Publish Today
Strapi 5's Draft & Publish feature enhances the way you manage content, offering a safer, more organized approach to moving content from draft to publication. It reduces the risk of publishing errors, supports collaboration, and gives you the flexibility to control how your content is shared with the world. Try it out today and see how it transforms your content management process.
→ Read more about the Draft & Publish feature and how to use it in the documentation.
Introducing Content History in Strapi 5
Let’s face it—mistakes happen. Sometimes a content update doesn’t work out as planned, or you realize that a previous version was better. Strapi 5 introduces Content History to tackle this issue head-on.
Every time you save a piece of content, Strapi automatically creates a snapshot of the previous version. If you ever need to roll back to an earlier version, you can do so with just a few clicks. This isn’t just about undoing mistakes; it’s about giving you the freedom to experiment without worrying about losing your work.
The system is designed to be intuitive: each version is stored with a timestamp and a label of its status, making it easy to identify the right version to revert to. We built this feature to reduce the friction that often comes with content management, particularly in fast-paced environments where changes are frequent and rollback needs to be quick and painless.
Accessing Content History
Content History in Strapi 5 gives you a detailed log of all changes made to your content. It’s accessible directly from the Edit view of any document created with the Content Manager:
- While editing a document, click on the "More" icon at the top right of the interface.
- Select the "Content History" button, which opens a detailed view of all past versions.
The right sidebar lists all versions, including the creation date, time, the user who made the changes, and the status (Draft, Modified, or Published). The main view on the left displays the fields and content for the selected version, letting you see exactly what was changed.
Restore Previous Versions with Confidence
Need to revert to an earlier version? Select the desired version from the sidebar and click the "Restore" button. This action overwrites the current draft with the selected version's content, switching the document to the Modified status. You can then further edit or publish this restored version as needed.
If you're working with the Internationalization (i18n) feature, restoring a version with a unique field (content shared across all locales) will update this field in every locale, ensuring consistency across your content.
Understanding Changes
The Content History view makes it clear which fields were inexistent, deleted, or renamed in different versions. Unknown fields from previous versions are shown under the "Unknown fields" section, making it easier to understand the evolution of your content over time.
Availability and Plans
The Content History feature is available as a paid feature, providing enhanced capabilities based on your Strapi plan:
| Strapi Cloud | Self-hosted Enterprise |
|---|---|
| Developer Plan: No access to Content History. | Unlimited Retention: Full access to Content History with unlimited retention duration. |
| Pro Plan: Retains content history for 30 days. | |
| Team Plan: Retains content history for 90 days. |
These options allow you to choose the level of content control that best suits your project needs, from simple drafts to comprehensive version management for enterprise-level projects.
→ Check the full details of the available plans on the pricing page.
Start Using Content History Today
Content History in Strapi 5 empowers you with full control over your content's lifecycle. It’s like having a safety net for your content, ensuring that every change is tracked and every version is accessible. Whether you need to restore a past version, understand the evolution of your content, or simply explore different approaches, Content History has you covered.
Try Content History with a free trial on the Pro Plan and explore how these features can transform your content management process.
A Cleaner, More Focused Workspace
We've refined the navigation in Strapi 5 to give users more space and clarity, particularly in the Content Manager. This wasn't just about moving things around—it was a deliberate UI refresh aimed at saving space on all Strapi pages, with the biggest impact seen in the Content Manager. By maximizing the available workspace for your content, this update makes managing entries more comfortable and less cluttered.
Here's what we did to improve the navigation:
- Saved Space: We made the navigation smaller and removed the option to expand it, which frees up more space on every Strapi page. The Content Manager now has more room to display your entries, making it easier to focus on the content you're working on.
- Streamlined the Icons: To reduce visual clutter, we moved the plugins page and the list of installed plugins to the settings. This change removes these elements from the main navigation, freeing up additional space and making the interface less overwhelming.
- Reordered for Clarity: The order of icons was adjusted to group content-editing tools together, placing the Content Manager, Releases, and Media Library side by side. This intuitive grouping helps you navigate quickly to the tools you need for content creation and management.
- Enhanced Tooltips: The tooltip appearance speed was increased to make it easier for users to identify icons and learn the navigation faster. This small change aids in quickly understanding what each icon does, streamlining your workflow.
- Added a Home Icon: A new "Home" icon was added to provide a clear entry point back to the homepage, ensuring that navigating back to the starting point is just one click away.
- Visual Appeal: Lastly, we gave the entire navigation a visual refresh, making it not only more functional but also more aesthetically pleasing.
This update is about enhancing efficiency and focus. By giving more space to your content in the Content Manager, Strapi 5 ensures that the tools you need are accessible without distractions, allowing you to concentrate on creating and managing content seamlessly.
If you want to dive deeper, we recommend this video with Marc and Remi from the Strapi team.
Join Us for the Strapi 5 Launch Stream and Community Call on October 8th
To celebrate the launch of Strapi 5, we invite you to join us for a special Strapi Stream and community call on October 8th. This is your chance to connect with the team and learn more about what's new in Strapi 5. We'll be covering the latest updates, discussing how to migrate your projects smoothly, and diving into the new Plugin CLI. It's also the perfect opportunity to ask any questions you might have during our open Q&A session.
📅 Date: October 8th 8:00 AM (PST) | 17:00 (CET)
Global Strapi 5 Launch Parties – Join One Near You
To make the launch of Strapi 5 even more special, our global partners are organizing exclusive launch parties around the world. These events are a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the release, network with other Strapi users, and get firsthand insights from our partners. Whether you’re a seasoned Strapi expert or new to the platform, you’ll find great conversations, live demos, and exciting content at these gatherings.
Find a launch party near you and join in the celebrations!
We're Launching Strapi 5 on Product Hunt!
The Strapi 5 launch isn't just happening behind the scenes – we're bringing the excitement to Product Hunt! Be sure to support us by checking out our Product Hunt page, where we'll be showcasing all the new features of Strapi 5, including the powerful Plugin SDK, Draft & Publish, and Content History.
Your feedback and upvotes mean a lot to us as we continue to make Strapi the best headless CMS out there. Let’s make this a launch to remember!
Ready to Experience Strapi 5?
Strapi 5's Draft & Publish and Content History features provide a more controlled, flexible, and user-friendly content management experience. By allowing you to work on drafts safely, manage content statuses, and access previous versions at any time, these tools empower you to create and maintain content with greater confidence.
Upgrade to Strapi 5 today and experience the difference these new features can make in streamlining your editorial workflow. Whether you're managing a small blog or a complex multilingual project, Strapi 5 has the tools to support your content management journey.
To try the new version, run the following command. It's that easy.
npx create-strapi
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Strapi
Strapi | Sciencx (2024-09-25T21:51:26+00:00) Introducing Draft & Publish and Content History in Strapi 5. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/09/25/introducing-draft-publish-and-content-history-in-strapi-5/
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