Here's the nitty-gritty: Beginning this week, the default visibility for blog posts will start as "Draft." When you're ready for your post to be read by others, you must change the visibility to the appropriate setting. As soon as you change the visibility to something other than "Draft", every time you go back to edit that particular post, it will automatically default to the visibility setting you chose. Read on to learn more...
My favorite writer Anne Lamott says, "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts." This is meant as encouragement; "You have to start somewhere," she says. Don't expect it to be flawless from the very beginning. Writing a blog post, even a small one, is no different than starting a novel. "You have to start somewhere." On ActiveRain, that starting point is a draft post.
We've had a ton of member feedback about the default blog post visibility setting. A number of you have reached out to us over the years in an angry panic: the post you had intended to leave in its imperfect, first-draft state had accidentally gone public and it wasn't ready! You weren't done with it yet! You were going to finish it later and now everyone has read it! So, we're making some changes.
Originally, when you wrote a post on ActiveRain, the default visibility setting was "Public" (if you're a RainMaker) or "Members Only" (if you're not a RainMaker). Starting on Thursday, June 23rd, this is going to change.
Beginning this week, the default visibility for blog posts will start as "Draft." This means when you write a post, as long as you don't change the setting, you can just click "Post Blog Entry" and it will post as a draft to your blog. You can come back and work on it at any time, and no one can read it except for you.
When you're ready for your post to be read by others, you must change the visibility to the appropriate setting (either Associates Only, Members Only, or Public). Now, here's the part that's important:
As soon as you change the visibility to something other than "Draft", every time you go back to edit that particular post, it will automatically default to the visibility setting you chose. For example, if I post a Members Only blog about how much I love working at ActiveRain on Thursday, but decide I want to edit that post on Friday, that post's visibility will remain as Members Only, even in edit mode, unless I change the Visibility setting to something else.
We hope this will prevent any accidental viewings of posts that are unfinished, unpolished, or just not quite ready. From now on, you will have to physically select the visibility setting to take your post out of "Draft" mode. Remember, once you've changed the visibility to something other than "Draft" it will automatically default to whatever setting you have chosen from then on.
Anne Lamott goes on to say, "Start by getting something- anything- down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-- you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-- you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy."
However long and however many tries it takes to get you to the dental draft, there's no longer the worry that you'll accidentally post something that isn't ready. Write it, come back to it, write some more, and as soon as you're sure it's sound, shiny, and healthy, change your visibility setting to share your words of wisdom with the world.
We want to keep you in the loop, but as always, if you have any questions, let us know!
Written by staff contributor Karli Larson
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