$Id$

DESCRIPTION

This modules forces new unpublished content as well as edits to current content to first go into a queue for review by a moderator/publisher, rather than immediately becoming "live", i.e. visible to the public.

We took our inspiration from the Revision Moderation module by Angie Byron, but found that a patch could not implement the deviating functionality our customers required, which would change the current behaviour of the RM module and surprise existing users.

In the RM module the permissions to edit and revert/publish content are lumped together, so that it isn't possible to enforce separation of these responsibilites by role. This module allows you to assign distinct permissions for authors (to only create and edit content) and moderator roles (to review, publish, revert, unpublish and optionally delete content). No unnessary revisions are created when saving a revision that is pending. Menu navigation has been altered so that users first pick the desired revision before being allowed to view, edit, publish, revert, unpublish or delete. Triggers are provided for the publish, unpublish and revert events. By taking advantage of the Module Grants module this module integrates better with the Workflow and Taxonomy Access Control (Lite) modules. This means that you can easily implement fine-grained content access control based on categories as well as workflow states. With both Module Grants and Revisioning installed this all works for both published and unpublished content. There's also a "publish-pending-revision" action that may be triggered from a workflow state transition (like "in review"->"publish"). Unlike RM, Revisioning does not require any additional database tables.

INSTALLATION

0. Install the Module Grants module. This is a package containing 4 modules. Although highly recommended the main module in this package is not required, but the Node Tools submodule is. Module Grants Monitor is also recommended, although Revisioning features similar functionality through a canned view (for which, you'll naturally have to install Views).
1. Optionally install the Diff module if you want to compare revisions and highlight the differences.
2. Place the "revisioning" folder in your "sites/all/modules" directory. Enable Revisioning under Administer >> Site building >> Modules.

CONFIGURATION

3. Under Administer >> Content >> Content types, click "edit" next to the content types for which you wish to enable/disable revisioning. Under "Workflow Settings", Default Options, tick both the "Create new revision" and "New revision in draft, pending moderation" checkboxes. Also in this section UNtick "Published", so that all new content is created in an unpubished state, i.e. invisible to the public. "New revision in draft, pending moderation" means that when a user edits and saves a piece of content the new revision isn't automatically made current. The previous copy remains unchanged and visible to the public until the newer revision is published in its place. There is an additional radio-button on the same page that augments the above behaviour giving you the option to "Only create a new revision when saving content that is not already in draft/pending moderation". This will save you some disk space, because until the draft is published all modifications will be applied to the same copy, i.e. no new revision is created when one already exists. On the other hand there are situations, for instance with a Wiki page with multiple authors editing the same copy, where you do want every Save to create a new draft (revision), so that contributors can compare what was changed between saves. The Diff module is a good addition to Revisioning for this.
4. Revisioning builds on the Accessible content menu item (if you have enabled Module Grants Monitor), adding the "In draft/Pending publication" filter to the double row of tabs.
5. Grant to the various roles the view/delete/revert revisions permissions (node access section) and the "edit revisions" permission (revisioning section). Typically you'd give authors the "view revisions" and "edit revisions" permissions, while moderators will get the same as well as the "publish/revert revisions" permission. Neither require the "administer nodes" permission, which is a good thing as this gives ordinary users excessive rights.

USAGE

You should now be in business. Log in as one of the authors and Create content. Save. Log out, then log in as a moderator to publish the content via the Accessile content >> Pending tab (if you installed Module Grants Monitor) or via the Content summary menu option (if you installed Views). Click on the title of the post, then open the desired revision by clicking on the date. Check the content, the press the "Publish this" tab. Note that up to this point content isn't visible to the public. Log in as an author again and revise the content. You will notice that upon saving the new revision, the one visible to the public remains unchanged. Log in as a moderator again to promote (publish), the revised content to live. As an alternative to the Accessible content menu item, you may want to activate the "pending revisions" block. This block is particularly useful for moderators as it constantly shows the latest content requiring moderator attention in an inobtrusive corner of the screen. Configure and enable the block like any other on the Administer >> Site building >> Blocks page. You can use this module in combination with TAC or TAC-Lite for fine-grained access control based on vocabularies (such as "region" or "department") associated with the various content types. Be aware that any permissions given in the "node module" section override those granted via TAC/TAC-Lite, so you probably only want to assign a few creation permissions in the node module and do the view, update and delete grants via TAC/TAC-Lite. In addition you may want to install the Workflow module to further segragate the author and moderator roles via access control based on states such as "in draft", "in review" and "live". Workflow also allows you to notify users when state transitions occur (e.g. when a moderator declines or publishes a submitted revision). Step-by-step guides on the usage of the Revisioning module in combination with the TAC-Lite and Workflow modules can be found on the Revisioning project page http://drupal.org/project/revisioning.

AUTHOR

Rik de Boer, Melbourne, Australia; inspired by the Revision Moderation module.