When updating a post, ask for a remark (aka commit message) about prose

[michael]

from a commit comment:

Ideas for the interface? I'm always trying to avoid popups, so what about adding a remark field to the Publish Widget. It would sit next to the "Publish/Republish" button.

[michael]

There's another issue with the publishing workflow in terms of republishing. I've solved this for Substance by introducing versions (=snapshots) of a document. In the case of Columnist, we might be fine without that for now.

The problem I'm referring to here boils down to the process of "republishing", which means saving an already published document. With columnist those changes will immediately be visible on the site (which often is just fine). But if you want to have a review process for changing documents (aka holding updates back until they are confirmed), you simply can't do that now. We just need to be aware of that.

For our interface I'd propose the following states being covered by the Publish widget.

Unpublished

Actions: Publish (including a remark field)

Published

Actions: Unpublish, Publish Changes (aka Save Post, also including a remark field)

By hitting Unpublish we'll set the hidden flag again and the post will disappear from the blog.

Thoughts?

[lxbarth]

I think /optional/ remarks are fine, like github does that.

You're right that republishing isn't an issue for now.

[michael]

Kk, so let's move on. Just need to say.. after some more minutes of consideration.. support the pull-request workflow would take the entire content management thing to a whole new level. It'd be something like Git... but for content authors, with an easy-to-grasp interface.

[michael]

Discussion about a pull-request powered workflow should go here: https://github.com/developmentseed/columnist/issues/5