Creating and Using Checklists

Using PublishPress Checklists, you can define tasks that must be complete before content is published.

This is a guide to creating your checklists.

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Enabling checklists for post types #

• Click “Checklists” then “Settings” in your WordPress admin menu.

• Here you can select what content types you want to use with the Checklist.

Checklists will work with custom post types. This next image shows the screen we just saw above, but with an events calendar plugin also installed on the site.

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Creating Checklists #

• Go to “Checklists” then “Checklists” in your WordPress admin menu.
• Choose your post type. In the image below, you can choose “Post” or “Pages”. Other content types will show if you selected them in the “Settings” area.

For each content type, you can create a unique checklist:

Checklist Tasks #

Here are the default tasks:

• Number of characters in title
• Number of words in content
• Number of internal links in content
• Number of external links in content
• All links use a valid format
• Number of categories
• Number of tags
• Approved by a user in this role
• Alt text for all images
• Featured image
• Numbers of characters in excerpt
• Latin characters in permalink (contains the characters A to Z, 0 to 9, or - and _)
• Minimum Yoast SEO readability score (only shows if the Yoast SEO plugin is installed)
• Minimum Yoast SEO analysis score (only shows if the Yoast SEO plugin is installed)
• WooCommerce product tasks
• Custom tasks

It is also possible to create your own checklist requirements.

Disabled, Recommended or Required? #

All the tasks are disabled by default. You can select only the requirements you need.

In the center column, you can choose a specific action for each requirement:

• Disabled
• Recommended
• Required

If you choose the “Required” option, it will be impossible to publish without completing the task. If you choose a “Recommended message”, authors will be reminded of this task but still able to publish.

Who can ignore the task? #

This column allows user roles who can skip certain tasks.

For example, you may want all your “Authors” to write a minimum number of words for each post. However, you may also want to allow “Administrators” to use their discretion and skip that requirement.

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Using the Checklists #

When you create new content, you will see the Checklist in right sidebar, as in the image below:

When you click “Publish”, you will also see the checklist before you confirm you want to make the content public. If you see a warning sign, the post is not ready to publish.