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Our authors are requesting a publishing feature along the following lines. Let's say we have version 5 of an item approved, published, and visible on our live site. Our authors then edit version 6 of that item and approve it. How can we go about setting a future publish date time for version 6? Also, we do not want version 5 removed from our live site. We simply want version 6 published when the future publish date time arrives. I know from playing with publishing restrictions that if we set a future publishable time for this item, version 5 will be immediately removed from our live site, which we don't want.

Can this be done out of the box from Sitecore? If not, is there an existing app where this can be done?

Thanks

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  • Basically you want two versions on same item to be available on Web DB, both working on same URL? Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 19:38

1 Answer 1

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In terms of auto-publishing at a specific time this is a really good module and it supports versions: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/Modules/S/Sitecore_Scheduled_Publish.aspx?sc_lang=en

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See my answer here for more info on the module: Scheduled publish/unpublish strategy

With regard to maintaining multiple urls for different versions of an item. This is not possible out of the box to my knowledge and doesn’t fit with how Sitecore works. An item has one published version and one url. Two urls pointed at one item (but with different urls) is not supported.

I would suggest instead of creating multiple versions your content editors copy the page and add the version to the page name (e.g my-page-v1, my-page-v2 etc) and then use the new module to publish the new page at a specific time. You could always have a listing page which listed all versions.

It’s hard to say for sure with out more info on your use-case though.

Update

In Sitecore 8+ you can actually have more than one version of an item in the web database, this is used for the A/B testing functionality. You could perhaps write something custom leveraging the PublishTestingVersions Processor to achieve what you want but you would have to ensure the RemoveOtherVersions Processor doesn't run. Something like:

public class CustomVersionProcessor
{
    public void Process(Sitecore.Publishing.Pipelines.PublishVersion.PublishItemVersionArgs args)
    {
        // Custom logic here
    }
}

More info can be found here:

https://community.sitecore.net/technical_blogs/b/sitecore_development_team/posts/multiple-item-versions-in-web-database

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  • Hello. I believe I phrased my question incorrectly. Let's say version 5 of an item is live on our web site. Our authors then edit version 6 and approve it. They would then like version 6 to be published and live at a future date. How can we do this and can this be done out of the box? We played with setting the date time for the publish field, then publishing. That immediately removes the current item from our live site which we don't want. I believe the publish field is simply for declaring when an item is publishable, not necessarily publishing the item. Thanks
    – Cosmo Dev
    Commented Apr 17, 2018 at 19:50
  • @CosmoDev can you provide example of two versions (v5 &6 day) and what the urls for the page would be so I can I understand your use-case a bit more please? It’s hard to be able to suggest solutions without knowing more Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 9:04
  • Adam, let me simplify. Let's say our authors change content on our home page and they submit and approve it. They would then like this published late at night, say 4 hours later. How can this be done out of the box? If it can't be done out of the box, how could I go about architecting a solution? Thanks
    – Cosmo Dev
    Commented Apr 20, 2018 at 12:27
  • Ok so In that case I'd have an v1 of the homepage with the current version that is live and then a v2 with the updated changes and I'd use the Sitecore Scheduled Publish module (from the marketplace) to publish v2 at a specific time later in the day. Workflow should be honoured so if it's not approved it won't get published as far as I'm aware. That should handle this scenario. The v1 version would at publish time be replaced though. Commented Apr 20, 2018 at 12:42
  • Adam, I installed the module, but it's not working. I see the scheduled task being created, but when the time passes, nothing is published. I'm on 8.2 update 4 and the module description page says 8.0. I don't know if that's an issue. Any ideas? Thanks.
    – Cosmo Dev
    Commented Apr 25, 2018 at 15:18

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