Title: Custom Theme – Single.php pulls up draft posts
Last modified: October 10, 2017

---

# Custom Theme – Single.php pulls up draft posts

 *  [space10045](https://wordpress.org/support/users/space10045/)
 * (@space10045)
 * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/)
 * I’ve created a custom plugin, and link to posts on my main page using permalinks.
   An example is:
    [http://www.mysite.com/post-title/](http://www.mysite.com/post-title/)
 * However, when I click on that link and the post has a published version and a
   draft version…my single.php pulls up both of them. Below is my single.php code.
   Is there somewhere that I can exclude draft posts?
 *     ```
       <?php
   
       get_header();
   
       get_sidebar('left');
       ?>
   
           <div id="content">
   
       	<?php
       	if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
       	?>
   
       	<h2 style="margin-bottom:0;"><?php the_title();?></h2>
       	<p style="margin-top:0;"> Author: <?php the_author();?> Date: <?php the_date();?></p>
   
       	<?php the_content(); ?>
   
       	<hr> <?php endwhile; else: ?>
       	<p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p>
       	<?php endif; ?>   
   
           </div>  
   
       <?php
       get_sidebar('right');
   
       get_footer();
   
       ?>
       ```
   

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  Thread Starter [space10045](https://wordpress.org/support/users/space10045/)
 * (@space10045)
 * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/#post-9573043)
 * Just to clarify – the two posts (one published and one draft) are separate posts
   with their own slugs (but the draft has a “-2” at the end of the slug), but have
   the same post title.
 *  [Subrata Sarkar](https://wordpress.org/support/users/subrataemfluence/)
 * (@subrataemfluence)
 * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/#post-9573153)
 * I would like to reproduce your issue but whenever I am publishing a post from
   draft, I am not been able to keep the draft version. How are you doing this? 
   How are you keeping both draft and published version of the same post?
 * When a published post is reverted back to Draft status WordPress won’t allow 
   a visitor to see the content of that post any more.
 * I don’t think there is anything wrong in the code. Can you try to print the post
   ID on `single.php` and check what exactly you are getting? Also what var_dump
   says?
 * In the plugin code if you are using`WP_Query`, please make sure you have used`
   status=>'publish'`.
 * If you have other plugins installed in your application, before doing anything
   else, please deactivate them all and see if the issue still persists. If no, 
   find out the actual plugin by activating plugins one by one and checking whether
   the issue comes up due to the latest plugin activated.
 *  [Subrata Sarkar](https://wordpress.org/support/users/subrataemfluence/)
 * (@subrataemfluence)
 * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/#post-9573187)
 * Hmm, Separate Posts! That’s what I thought. Anyway, I created two separate posts
   with same title. Now I have two almost similar permalinks with the difference
   of having “-2” at the end in one of these two.
 * But for me `single.php` page loads only the published post, as it should be. 
   Also when they are separate posts, there is no way of getting a conflict as those
   two have completely separate post ID.
 * I think you need to look into your plugin code where you are running a query (
   probably) to fetch the list of posts.
    -  This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by [Subrata Sarkar](https://wordpress.org/support/users/subrataemfluence/).
 *  Thread Starter [space10045](https://wordpress.org/support/users/space10045/)
 * (@space10045)
 * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/#post-9573252)
 * Hi – I appreciate your response. What is the proper way to link to a specific
   post from a listing of posts? Here is the code I used:
 *     ```
       <?php $args = array(
       			'posts_per_page'   => 3,
       			'orderby'          => 'date',
       			'order'            => 'DESC',
       			'post_type'        => 'post',
       			'post_status'      => 'publish',
       			'suppress_filters' => true 
       		);
   
       		$posts_array = get_posts( $args );
   
       		foreach ( $posts_array as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post );
       		?>
         <a href="<?php echo the_permalink();?>" class="underline"><?php echo the_title();?></a>
           		<?php
       		endforeach; 
       ```
   
 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/#post-9574627)
 * Your query code is fine. I think what Subrata is suggesting is some plugin code
   is altering post queries, causing drafts to be included in queries. This is easily
   done through the pre_get_posts action by adding ‘draft’ to the ‘post_status’ 
   query var. If you were to disable all plugins, I think you will find that drafts
   are no longer included. If you re-activate your plugins one by one, once drafts
   reappear, the last activated plugin is the one adding ‘draft’ to query vars.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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## Tags

 * [custom-template](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/custom-template/)
 * [single.php](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/single-php/)

 * In: [Developing with WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced/)
 * 5 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-theme-single-php-pulls-up-draft-posts/#post-9574627)
 * Status: not resolved

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