Just some background info: there are 2 types of statuses in Publisher. Publisher’s Published/Draft status, and EE’s native Status drop down field, which should have no bearing on showing Publisher data. The native Status drop down is still used, so you can save an entry as a Publisher draft with a Featured status, and if the entries tag has a status=”Featured” param, then it will load the entry regardless of the Publisher status.

I’m unable to replicate what you are saying. When a new entry is created as a Publisher Draft is assigned the native status field value of Draft too. Even if I create a new entry and set its native status field to Featured Publisher still sets the native status field to Draft, thus its hidden on the site. If I edit the same entry, save it as a Publisher Draft and change the native status field to Featured it sticks as Publisher Draft and native Featured.

The statuses are independent, but it still needs to create a Draft status in the native status field so the entry does not show in the site until its published. I should rephrase it and say they’re not completely independent… they do work in unison, but they are not tightly coupled. For example Better Workflow, from my experience, does not work very well with custom statuses… it hi-jacks the native status field in what I consider a non-friendly manor. Publisher doesn’t hi-jack it, so its more friendly, but it does need to change the value to Draft to keep a brand new entry from showing on the site before its ready.

This code will let you set the new entry as Featured, save it as a Publisher Draft, and the status will remain as Featured (prior to this patch it forces the native status field back to Draft). If an entries tag has status=”Featured” in it, then the Publisher Draft will be displayed on the front-end, potentially before its ready, which it sounds like is the opposite of what you’re looking for, in which case the behavior current behavior is what you probably want. You’ll set the native status field to Featured, or just leave it alone, save it as a Publisher Draft, thus it will not appear on the front-end. When its ready to go live, then you change the native status field to Featured and Publisher status to Published.

In models/publisher_entry.php around line 256 you’ll see this:

// Now set this entry's status to our new draft
                    $this->EE->db->where('entry_id', $this->data_columns['entry_id'])
                             ->update('channel_titles', array('status' => lang(PUBLISHER_STATUS_DRAFT)));

Change it to this:

if (in_array($meta['status'], array(PUBLISHER_STATUS_DRAFT, PUBLISHER_STATUS_OPEN)))
                {
                    // Now set this entry's status to our new draft
                    $this->EE->db->where('entry_id', $this->data_columns['entry_id'])
                             ->update('channel_titles', array('status' => lang(PUBLISHER_STATUS_DRAFT)));
                }