Helm › Helm University › Track 2 › Lesson 2.7
Lesson 2.7Draft, pending and live
Every product has two states, not one, and confusing them is why a published product can be invisible.
Prefer to listen? This is the same lesson, word for word. The text below is the transcript.
This lesson prepares you to: Explain the two separate states a product carries and why publishing does not make a listing visible on its own.
Two states, not one
Every product carries two separate flags and both must be right before a shopper can see it.
| Flag | Values | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Status | draft, active, archived | You |
| Moderation | pending, approved, rejected | Helm |
Visible to shoppers = status active AND moderation approved AND your shop active.
Publishing sets the first one. It does not touch the second. That is the whole source of the confusion, and it is worth reading twice: a published product is not necessarily a visible one.
What happens when you press publish
A new product is created as a draft with moderation pending. Pressing publish sets the status to active. Moderation stays pending, and Helm tells you so in the response.
Then a person reviews it. There is no automated classifier, no image scan and no keyword filter on product content anywhere in Helm. Pre publish moderation is a human reading listings, and it exists to keep the storefront family safe.
Publishing checks nothing
Being straight about this. Publishing does not verify that you set a price, added an image, chose a real category, have any stock, or have finished connecting Stripe. It sets a flag. Every one of those problems will still be there afterwards, and most of them are invisible until a shopper hits them.
Run your own checklist, because Helm does not run one for you.
The two shops that skip the queue
Two kinds of shop publish straight to live with no moderation wait: the official Helm store, and shops holding Official Brand verification. Their catalogue also stays live through edits. Everybody else is pre moderated, every time.
That is one more concrete reason to pursue verification, on top of the badge and the verified rail.
Unpublishing and deleting
Unpublish sets the product back to draft. Delete archives it. Neither one touches an order that already exists. Every order keeps its own snapshot of the title, the image and the price at the moment it was placed, so fulfilment, refunds and your payout all carry on exactly as they were.
You can safely pull a listing without stranding a buyer who already bought it.