How to display by default only published posts/pages in the admin area?

Question

As it is, WordPress displays by default all the pages/posts in the pages/posts list in the admin area, no matter what their publishing status is.

I have a lot of drafts, but usually I'm much more interested in editing the published pages/posts, therefore getting only to display them requires another click and full reload.

Is there a way to set WordPress to initially display only published posts/pages, allowing you to click on "All" or "Draft" if you later want to?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if there's another way, but manipulating the global variable $submenu can make this work.

The following is just a manual hack (I'm not aware of any hook) and may fail on non-standard submenus set ups. The regular Post post type has a unique address and the rest of types has another one, hence two foreachs.

add_action( 'admin_menu', 'default_published_wpse_91299' );

function default_published_wpse_91299() 
{
    global $submenu;

    // POSTS
    foreach( $submenu['edit.php'] as $key => $value )
    {
        if( in_array( 'edit.php', $value ) )
        {
            $submenu['edit.php'][ $key ][2] = 'edit.php?post_status=publish&post_type=post';
        }
    }

    // OTHER POST TYPES
    $cpt = array( 'page', 'portfolio' ); // <--- remove or adapt the portfolio post type
    foreach( $cpt as $pt )
    {
        foreach( $submenu[ 'edit.php?post_type=' . $pt ] as $key => $value )
        {
            if( in_array( 'edit.php?post_type=' . $pt, $value ) )
            {
                $submenu[ 'edit.php?post_type='.$pt ][ $key ][2] = 'edit.php?post_status=publish&post_type=' . $pt;
            }
        }   
    }
}

Answer 2

To display published pages by default on pages link, simply paste this code snippet in your functions.php. You can then visit “All” tab to see full list of pages.

// change page link to display published pages only
function wcs_change_admin_page_link() {
    global $submenu;
    $submenu['edit.php?post_type=page'][5][2] = 'edit.php?post_type=page&post_status=publish';
}
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'wcs_change_admin_page_link' );

If you want to achieve the same for post link in admin dashboard then use following code snippet instead.

// change post link to display published posts only
function wcs_change_admin_post_link() {
    global $submenu;
    $submenu['edit.php'][5][2] = 'edit.php?post_status=publish';
}
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'wcs_change_admin_post_link' );

Reference: http://www.wpcodesnippet.com/wordpress-admin/change-pages-link-display-published-pages/