Adding a professional workflow to your site

If you’re working with more than one person to write, edit, and publish content, soon you’ll want to extend the rather simple open/close options that ExpressionEngine offers. There are a number of choices in this area, but we have been using (and heartily recommend) Leevi Graham’s wonderful NSM Publish Plus extension.

We’ve been using Leevi’s latest version (v1.1.0) for a couple of projects now, and the granular control it offers site owners is pretty impressive. from saving internal drafts, viewing live in-template previews, using 4 different entry “states”, adding revision notes and getting email notifications, Publish Plus really has enough control to satisfy even the most complex workflow process.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the extension is the detailed preferences that can be setup in all aspects of the workflow. The sheer number of options may be a bit overwhelming at first, but once setup there won’t be a lot of need to go back and tweak.

We did find that a short training sessions was in order to get the end-users (clients and their copywriters, editors, and publishers) comfortable with the setup, but after the brief initiation period it was easy to use and fold it into the company’s internal process. There are a still a few minor changes we’d like to see, such as the ability to turn the draft notes on/off, but overall this is a must for many site owners who’d like to setup a professional content workflow to their sites.