adding "Unlisted" type for post visibility

[tazotodua]

I think there is a good reason that WP natively supported "unlisted" posts, in addition to PUBLIC, DRAFT and PRIVATE.

Why not WP add that feature?

btw, Private is not same as "unlisted".

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to tazotodua:

btw, Private is not same as "unlisted".

Here's how ​Codex defines private content:

Private content is published only for your eyes, or the eyes of only those with authorization permission levels to see private content. Normal users and visitors will not be aware of private content. It will not appear in the article lists. If a visitor were to guess the URL for your private post, they would still not be able to see your content. You will only see the private content when you are logged into your WordPress blog.

How would "Unlisted" be different?

[tazotodua]

do you know how youtube work? or google drive?
when upload a file, you have 3 options to share:
public,
unlisted,
private.

PRIVATE is type when only authorized user can see.
but unlisted, is one that you can send to anyone (without access) and can see the page.

it is good, before the page goes into production, however, want to show it to non-registered users, friends , etc.. (who is not registered and etc.. on your site).

very quick and simple method.

also, plus, the unlisted pages are not included anywhere (sitemap, front-end, archives...).

almost all major online platforms (like i said, google drive, youtube, etc..) which doesnt have that feature, and just thought WP could have that too.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to tazotodua:

PRIVATE is type when only authorized user can see.
but unlisted, is one that you can send to anyone (without access) and can see the page.

Thanks for the clarification, makes sense now :)

[coredump-ch]

I would like to add a +1 to this feature request.

I have used plugins for making a post unlisted a few times, but the ones that are around are buggy and don't work reliably. Native support for this would be fantastic (and is probably not too hard to implement).

A typical workflow where I would need this, is when asking people for a review of a not-yet-published post, when those people are not registered on the wordpress instance itself. Making a post unlisted but visible when knowing the URL would be by far the easiest solution.

[SirLouen]

I can also see that this looks like a nice idea. I cannot fully foresee how big of the request could be but it feels like it could require multiple changes, as most control structures are regarding the other statuses but not this one, so it will bring major breaking changes.

I've seen there is a plugin that already achieves this functionality
​https://wordpress.org/plugins/unlist-posts/

Still, I truly believe it is an excellent addition to Core. In fact, I was demanding exactly this for one of those docs SaaS recently. For a system like WP that can easily act as a docs platform, goes straight to the target.

I'm going to review the plugin and give it a better second thought when I get some time. For now I will leave this as a 2nd-opinion to see what more people think about this.

It seems that already @SergeyBiryukov has liked this 👍