Handle the actual "publishing" tasks in the following order; it should avoid the necessity of having to purge each individual article to update the footer.

1. Create an issue contents page (at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. this Wednesday: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-10-01). It should be in the same format as Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-12-22 (The numbers in the second parameter, the "story numbers," determine the order of the stories in talkpage notifications). If there is a note from the editor, make that story #0, so it is at the top of the list. (It will have different formatting, so only use "0" for important announcements). The sample page shows the "standard order," but it's fine to adjust it to reflect importance. Add the new issue date to each line. Copy the section titles from the draft header template on each section. When you first save the page, all the links will be red until you complete later steps.
2. Move each section to a subpage of Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/YYYY-MM-DD. When you move each one, in the page title, replace "/Next issue/" with "/YYYY-MM-DD/" (with the actual date numbers).
   • Make sure each section has a standard name (e.g., "News and notes", not "News") so that the links to previous issues work.
   • Untick the "Move associated talk page" option (the talk pages should only contain the "please use the newsroom" notice).
   • If you're an admin or page mover, untick "Leave a redirect behind". If you're not, ask an admin to delete the pages you leave behind (at some point in the next few hours; not mission-critical for publication).
   • Optional for now: Purge the "issue contents" page created in step #1, and the links should all turn blue.
3. Double-check that the footer exists at the bottom of each section. If it's not there, add the following line: <noinclude>{{Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-comments-end||YYYY-MM-DD|}}</noinclude> The YYYY-MM-DD in this code should be replaced with the previous issue in which that section ran.
4. Change Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Issue to the date of publication, and update Volume # and Issue #. Write an edit summary that notifies readers, via watchlists, that you are publishing a new issue; e.g. "Publishing new edition."
5. Edit main page, starting with the generic skeleton. Ensure there are no redlinks by removing pages that are not part of the current issue, and manually add irregular content sections. Copying titles and blurbs is tedious without scripts.
6. Create a new single-page edition by copying this code: {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single|issuedate=2016-XX-XX}} to the subsequent redlink you'll see: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2023-10-01.
7. Create archive page by adding {{Signpost archive|last edition date|today's date|next edition date}} in the format {{Signpost archive|2016-XX-XX|2016-XX-XX|2016-XX-XX}}.
8. Remove "draft" templates from the headers of the pages (this goes from {{"Signpost draft" down to "ready = Yes}}).
9. Purge the cache of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Issue [1], Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost [2], Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single[3], this issue's archive page [4] and this page (the last for pre-generated output to copy/pastes farther down)
10. Announce the new issue on WikimediaAnnounce-L, using the pre-generated output above for copy & paste. Send from the wikipediasignpostgmail.com account. When composing the message in Gmail, click the Tx icon to remove HTML formatting before sending. (WikimediaAnnounce-l will automatically forward every message to Wikimedia-L, so do not send directly to Wikimedia-L, unless there is a forwarding error.) Check here and here to ensure that the messages have been posted.
11. Post the Signpost on the talkpages of subscribers. You must be an admin or mass message sender to do this.

    → See the collapsed section below for instructions and the message wikitext ("Manual process: English Wikipedia mass message delivery output for this issue")

Additionally:

1. Tweet about the new issue, linking, for example, to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2023-09-27 as landing page. Post to our Facebook page as well. (Note, this will automatically forward to Twitter; we should perhaps disconnect them, if we are going to be diligently posting to both sites.)
2. Post the Signpost on talk pages of subscribers on other projects, using m:Global message delivery. The subscribe message is loaded into m:Special:MassMessage for automatic delivery; you can use the pre-generated output below for copy & paste. Only users on the access list can initiate a bot run (Meta admins can add themselves).
3. Update the archive overview for the current year at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/2023, by copying the date above (which will be older) and updating the issue number and date.
4. Cleanup the newsroom: Reset the article status table on the Newsroom by following the instructions in the hidden comments.
5. Leave a note under Notes to thank this week's contributors and to announce any important upcoming news and any issues that have arisen with publication.
6. Find the previous instance of each section, and add a link to the current edition's section. Here is an example edit, where the previous Traffic Report is updated to add a "next Traffic Report" link. Keep in mind, not all sections run in every edition; so in some cases, this will mean going back two, three, or more editions.