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Set effective and expiration dates
This How-to is intended for:
Content Managers
It is possible for content managers to set a date and time when an item can become visible or hidden to public users, or display on specific pages.
For example, a news announcement can be placed on a gateway site, and specified that it will not appear on the news page or box until a set time, eg the time of a launch event. Another example may be when a competition is launched, with a closing date. The news announcement about this can have the expiry date set so that the announcement no longer shows after the closing date.
The method used for this is to set the 'Effective date' and 'Expiration date', and works on top of the 'state' of the item (published, public draft). Effective date is the time when the item becomes public, and the expiration date is the time when the item becomes hidden.
First create the item as usual, eg news item, page etc), then before you publish it, do the following:
1. To enable dates (except for events, where this is on the main edit form), you need to click on the 'Properties' tab at the top of the relevant item (page, news item, file etc), once it has been created, which will bring up the properties form.
2. Most of the other fields on this form can be ignored, so browse down the form.
3. To set the time/date the item will become visible select the 'effective date' using the drop down lists.
4. To set the time/date the item will become hidden, select the 'expiration date' using the drop down lists, then click on 'save' at the bottom of the form. You must then publish the item.
5. Items will automatically be in a 'public draft' state when first created and saved, which will not display in the navigation boxes. When the dates are set click on the 'state' link top of the page, and select 'publish'. Once published, the item will show on the relevant navigation box, unless the effective date has been set to later.
Note that an item that has had the effective and expiration dates set, must also be published to become visible. If the item remains in the 'public draft' state, the effective and expiration dates will not have any impact upon the visibility.
