WordPress comes with many different post statuses, which determine the published state of a post.  Content can be set to:

  • publish
  • private
  • draft
  • pending
  • future (to be published at a later date)

By default, new form submissions will be saved as "publish", meaning that they are considered available to be viewed by anyone (if the content type is publicly viewable in the first place, that is).

Often, however, you may want new entries to be saved as drafts or another status.  To accomplish this, you must add the status as a hidden field to the form:

  1. Add a new field to your submission form.
  2. Under "Field", select Core Info > Status.
  3. Under "Options", check the box next to "Hidden Field".
  4. In the "Hidden Value" box, enter one of the statuses above.

submission-status

If you enter "future", you must also specify the date/time to publish the entry.  You can do this by adding another field:

  1. Add a new field to your submission form.
  2. Under "Field", select Core Info > Date Published.
  3. If you would like this field to be user-editable, you're done. If you want to set the date privately, check the box next to "Hidden Field", and then specify the date in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format in the "Hidden Value" box.

submission-date-published