Campaign Lifecycle

Every campaign progresses through a series of statuses from creation to completion.

Statuses

Status	Visible to public	Description
Draft	No	The campaign is being built and has not been published.
Preview	Yes	Published and visible with a launch countdown, but not yet accepting contributions.
Active	Yes	Live and accepting contributions.
Paused	No	Temporarily halted by staff.
Ended	Yes	Past its end date or manually ended. No longer accepting contributions. Awaits a declared result.
Closed	No	Final state — staff have judged the campaign wound up. Every campaign field is locked from then on, for staff as well as creators.

Non-public statuses can be previewed

“Visible to public: No” means visitors can’t open the campaign page. Staff and the campaign’s author can still open it to preview how the campaign will look when published — see Previewing non-public campaigns.

Publishing a campaign

A campaign starts as a Draft and is published from the campaign form:

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Draft: Campaign is created

    Draft --> Preview: Published (future start date)
    Draft --> Active: Published (immediate start)

Adding an approval step

In a default install, publishing a campaign makes it live immediately. The Ignition Platform Mode add-on introduces a review workflow — campaigns are submitted for approval and staff publish or reject them — for sites that accept campaigns from outside creators.

Post-publication lifecycle

Once a campaign reaches Preview or Active, it follows this path:

stateDiagram-v2
    Preview --> Active: Start date reached
    Preview --> Paused: Staff pause
    Preview --> Ended: Staff end

    Active --> Paused: Staff pause
    Active --> Ended: End date reached / Manual end / Funding fails

    Paused --> Active: Staff resume (start date passed)
    Paused --> Preview: Staff resume (future start date)
    Paused --> Ended: Staff end

    Ended --> Closed: Staff mark complete

    Closed --> [*]

While a campaign is active, updates can be posted to keep backers informed. Updates are managed from the campaign’s management view.

Automatic transitions

An hourly background check transitions campaigns based on their dates:

• Preview → Active — When the campaign’s start date arrives, it automatically goes live.
• Active → Ended — When the end date passes, the campaign automatically ends. Campaigns run through their final day — a campaign ending on March 15 is still active on March 15 and ends on March 16.

When staff edit campaign dates on a live campaign, the status is re-evaluated immediately. For example, changing an Active campaign’s start date to the future moves it back to Preview.

Staff actions on published campaigns

Action	Available from	Result
Pause	Preview, Active	Temporarily halts the campaign.
Resume	Paused	Restarts the campaign. Goes to Preview or Active depending on start date.
End	Preview, Active, Paused	Concludes the campaign.
Announce Goal Reached	Active	Sends the goal-reached notification to backers once the campaign has hit its goal. Does not change the status.
Declare Result	Ended	Publishes the campaign’s outcome (Successful / Failed / Funded) and sends the outcome emails to backers. Does not change the status — see below.
Close	Ended	Records that you consider the campaign wound up, and locks every one of its fields. This is the terminal state. Closing does not move any money — see below.

Declaring a result is not a status change

Declare Result records the outcome on an Ended campaign and sends backers their outcome email — it does not move the campaign to a new status, and it is separate from Close. Ended campaigns that have not been declared yet appear in an Outcome Pending view so you can find them. See Declaring Campaign Results for the full workflow.

Closing does not pay anyone

Close is a bookkeeping decision: it says you consider this campaign finished, and it locks the campaign’s fields so nothing can be edited afterwards. It moves no money and sends nothing to a creator’s bank account. Paying a creator what a campaign raised is a separate act — done outside the plugin, or recorded with the Ignition Payouts add-on — and you can do it before or after closing.

Funding models

The funding model affects what happens when a campaign ends:

Model	Behavior at end date
Flexible	All funds are kept regardless of whether the goal was met. The declared result is Funded.
Fixed	All-or-nothing — if the goal isn’t met by the end date, the campaign fails and funds are returned. The declared result is Successful or Failed depending on whether the collected amount met the goal.

The funding model determines the outcome staff declare once the campaign has ended.

Pledges and campaigns

Only Active campaigns accept pledges. When a campaign ends, its pledges remain in their current state — staff can still record offline payments, issue refunds, or cancel pledges after the campaign is no longer active. See Pledging for full details on how pledges work, and Managing Pledges for the admin screens.