shawfactor

This plugin allows you to archive your WordPress content similar to the way you archive your e-mail. Unlike other archiving solutions though this actually does it all and does it properly
<ul>
<li>Makes a new post status available in the drop down called Archived</li>
<li>Hides or removes your content without having to trash the content</li>
<li>Content can either be hidden entirely from public view or simply from the main loop and feed and pages, with other solutions you can only hide it from public view.</li>
<li>Allows you to add a label to the title of those posts/pages etc that are archived</li>
<li>Allows you to add a message to the top of the post/page etc that the content is no longer up too date</li>
<li>Allows you to set an archiving date after which content is automatically changed to having an archived status</li>
<li>Compatible with posts, pages and custom post types</li>
</ul>
This plugin is ideal for sites where certain kinds of content is not meant to be evergreen
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LH Archived Post Status


When Automattic developed WordPress, it had a crazy notion of what an 'archive' is. 20+ years later, we're stuck to the same definition: WP considers that an 'archive' is really just a list of past articles, neatly ordered by month/year.



But that's not the case. A real Archive is a place where you can store posts that are not relevant any longer — thus keeping them away from the Loop — but without deleting them, because, naturally enough, the whole point of having an Archive is to allow search engines and backlinks to 'old' articles to still work correctly.



This is the whole point of this simple plugin: to allow to add a new status to every post/page, classifying it as having been archived. This means that the post/page will not require any changes: it doesn't need to be deleted, change its category, add any tags, or simply set to Draft (so that it doesn't appear). Instead, posts and pages stay exactly as they were before — just with a new status (beyond the classic ones, i.e., published, private, draft).



Because this status is an addition, this means that all well-behaved plugins and themes will not recognise it as a valid status (i.e. when checking if a post is published, the theme/plugin will not find the archived posts), and so they effectively 'disappear' from the visibility status of most 3rd party code. That's exactly what we expect to happen with an 'archived' post. And that's precisely what this plugin does, and does quite well; as such, it comes as highly recommended by many reviewers, and ranks high on their lists of 'best' plugins for a specific purpose.



The plugin itself is well-written, strictly follows all coding guidelines as set by Automattic and the developer community, regularly maintained, and has very reasonable support on the forums: issues are opened, followed up by the author, and closed when resolved or when threads become stale due to lack of activity. Documentation is minimal, because the plugin is so simple to activate and use (and not because anything is missing).



Sadly, at the time of writing this (July 2023), this plugin suffers from a dependency of a third-party library which, unfortunately, breaks the posting workflow, introducing a new way of saving new posts which is not only counter-intuitive, but lacks essential functionality. Work is under progress to restore the normal functionality of the posting workflow, but, until that happens (which is beyond the plugin author's control), it means that you very likely won't wish to use this plugin on any WordPress site that is used by more than one author.



I will certainly review my classification in the future, once this major issue gets resolved, and LH Archived Post Status works again, flawlessly integrated into the WordPress posting workflow, as it did in pre-Gutenberg days.


If you need to have a real Archive, this is the plugin you want

Allows posts and pages to be archived so you can remove content from the main loop and feed without having to trash it.

Alley

Matthew Boynes

WordPress has a wonderful editing model with its “draft workflow”, where writers can save unpublished drafts, preview posts, submit drafts for review from a superior, and even schedule a post’s publication. This is all that most writers and teams ever needed for a blog. WordPress has extended beyond blogs, and has grown to be the preferred platform for any person or team writing for the web. While WordPress has evolved, its editing model has not, and this editing model is limited. Once a post is published, edits cannot follow the same workflow. That’s where this plugin comes in. This plugin has two powerful features, the ability to clone posts and the ability to replace posts with another, which combined, allow writers to leverage core’s “draft workflow” for published posts.
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Create clones of existing posts. The replicas are created as drafts, and have all the same data (including terms and post meta) as the original post. The only things not cloned are child posts (which include revisions, attachments, and other posts)</li>
<li>Replace one post with another. The replaced post becomes a revision of itself, the replacing post is essentially deleted, and you’re left with the replacing post’s data with the post ID and slug of the replaced post.</li>
</ul>
Combined, these features give writers a pseudo-“fork and merge” model. Published posts can be cloned, the clones edited as any other draft can be, then the originals replaced with the clones.
Individually, these features are equally as useful. You don’t need to use the “fork and merge” model to take advantage of this plugin.

Clone & Replace

Gives you the ability to clone posts, and replace posts. Together, you have a very powerful tool for a fork/merge editing model.

LH Archived Post Status vs Clone & Replace