Persist Publish and Un-Publish Dates

[adamrpostjr]

When a post transitions from unpublished to published through an action in Publisher, the publish and unpublish dates are not retained. Is there a way to preserve these dates during this workflow?

[TMSchipper]

Hi @adamrpostjr,

Thanks for opening this issue.

Based on testing, it seems that the published_at and unpublish_at fields are currently treated as transient states rather than stored historical references. When a post transitions between unpublished and published, these fields are either updated or cleared without retaining previous values.

To preserve the publication and unpublication dates for reference or future use, additional logic would need to be implemented—such as storing these values in custom fields or adding an audit log for transitions.

Out of curiosity, could you share a bit more about the use case for retaining these dates? It seems that the existing created_at, updated_at, and published_at fields already provide sufficient context for most workflows. Understanding your specific scenario could help clarify if this is a gap or a unique need.

Kind regards,
Tim
PluginPal