How do you remove or change the functionality of the Publish button on a custom WordPress post? - wordpress

Question

I have a custom post type and need keep the post status from getting set to 'Published' when you click the Publish button. Instead, it should work like the Save Draft button. So I either need to figure out how to just remove the Publish button so the user's can only click Save Draft our preferably, update the Publish button functionality so it doesn't set the post to publish.

Answer 1

You can use wordpress action hooks to modify default behaviors.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_action
In your case, you want to use the 'publish_post' hook.
So you can do
function dont_publish( $post_ID )
{
if(get_post_type($post_ID) == 'your_custom_type'){
exit;
}
}
//the dont_publish function will be called after the publish button is clicked
add_action( 'publish_post', 'dont_publish' );
The way it is above, nothing will happen at all if the publish button is clicked, but you can play around with the dont_publish function to get the results you want.

Answer 2

#PhoenixWing156 was close but one little change so the the other post types get updated as usual.
function dont_publish( $data , $postarr ) {
if($data['post_type'] == 'custom_post_type') {
$data['post_status'] = 'draft';
}
return $data;
}
add_filter('wp_insert_post_data' , 'dont_publish' , '99', 2);

Answer 3

The wp_insert_post_data hook is called before information about a post is saved to the database.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference/wp_insert_post_data
You can try:
function dont_publish( $data , $postarr )
{
if($data['post_type'] == 'custom_post_type'){
$data['post_status'] = 'draft';
return $data;
}
}
add_filter('wp_insert_post_data' , 'dont_publish' , '99', 2);

Answer 4

WordPress provides the remove_meta_box() function exactly for this purpose.Just add this below code:-
add_action( 'admin_menu', function () {
remove_meta_box( 'submitdiv', 'Your_custom_post_type', 'side' );
} );

Answer 5

You could also disable the default saving metabox and add you own.
This is not documented well in the developer docs of wordpress.
To do this you have to hook into the "add_meta_boxes"-hook and in the hooked function yo have to call remove_meta_box('submitdiv','your-cpt','side');
The code should be something like this:
function your_cpt_metaboxes(){
remove_meta_box('submitdiv','your-cpt','side');
...
}
add_action('add_meta_boxes','function your_cpt_metaboxes');
your-cpt has to be changed to the name of your cpt of course.
I was also searching for this handy snippet and found it in the plugin Awesome Support.
The original saving metabox code can be found in /wp-admin/includes/metaboxes.php .
Just search for post_submit_meta_box (in WP 5.4 on line 22).