How does Drupal provide an edit/review/publish model?

Question

How does Drupal support a means to update and review a website before it is published?

Does it only allow you to preview a page at a time before you publish it or is there a way to create a site with multiple pages, review it and then publish it?

Is it best or easiest to create two Drupal Sites and push the contents of one to the other regularly (as a publish method)?

Answer 1

There are some modules that allow this functionality on a single site.

The workflow module allows you to invoke hooks when content types are created, edited, published, ect. I use this on a production site to notify me when new content is created so I can publish it.

Another module is the revision moderation module. You can allow users to edit nodes, but new revisions go into a queue for approval instead of being published immediately.

Answer 2

1. You can preview each page at a time before publishing it, but that is generally-user controlled. Sounds like you want more of a 'writer submits to editor who proofs and publishes' model?

2. Workflow module is all you need for that functionality. It will also involve a couple user roles (writer, editor, etc.). This is a model done many times, you can do it fairly easily.

2.5 Also Modr8 (Moderate) module may be simpler for you: http://drupal.org/project/modr8

1. Running a test site is more appropriate for site (code) development, not so much for just publishing content.