Editorial Workflow Manager vs Post Revision Workflow

Editorial Workflow Manager adds an editorial checklist to the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) so your team can follow a consistent pre-publish checklist every time you publish. It’s built for content teams, agencies, and editors who want a lightweight publishing checklist workflow inside the editor — with clear “ready vs incomplete” feedback — without hard publish blocking. This plugin does not output anything on the front end. What you can do Create reusable checklist templates (required + optional items). Assign different editorial checklists to different post types. Track per-post checklist progress in the editor sidebar. See readiness and progress in the post list table, sidebar, post status panel, and pre-publish panel. Typical use cases Blog posts: SEO checks, featured image, categories/tags, internal links, fact check. News/Editorial: legal review, source confirmation, editor sign-off checklist. Agencies: client approvals checklist, accessibility checks, brand requirements. Teams: consistent publishing workflow across authors and editors. Key features Accessible workflows – contextual labels, live status announcements, visible focus states, and keyboard-safe template controls. Template duplication – clone checklist templates and customize the copy. Curated starter templates – includes Blog SEO, News Fact-Check, Accessibility Review, and Client Approval templates. Checklist templates – manage reusable checklists as a custom post type. Template editor (row-based UI) – add, remove, reorder items; mark each item Required or Optional. Required vs Optional items – readiness is based on required items only. Helper text + reference links – add plain guidance text and an optional reference URL to each checklist item. Per-post checklist state – each post/page stores its own checklist progress. Gutenberg / Block Editor sidebar – “Editorial Checklist” panel inside the editor. Readiness + progress indicators Sidebar summary with Ready / Incomplete and required progress wp-admin post list Readiness column for mapped post types Post Status panel summary while editing Non-blocking pre-publish warning when required items are missing Different checklist per post type – assign templates in Settings. Curated starter templates included on activation and upgrade. Fresh-install quickstart wizard – choose post types, assign starter templates, and jump straight into the editor. Lightweight editor tour – auto-open the checklist sidebar once and explain required-item readiness. Backward compatible upgrades – legacy templates still work and upgrade to UUID-based v2 items when saved. Getting started Activate the plugin and complete the Quickstart wizard. Choose the post types where editorial checklists should appear. Confirm the starter template mappings, then open the editor. Follow the one-time sidebar tour in the block editor. Complete checklist items and watch the readiness/progress summary update. Adjust mappings later in Settings → Editorial Workflow or edit templates in Checklist Templates.

This plugin adds a minor bit of workflow to the WordPress interface. When anyone edits a post or a page that has already been published, a few extra options will be available in the “Publish” metabox. Any time the appropriate option is chosen, the changes will be saved as a revision to the page or post, and the previous revision (the version that was already published) will remain published. The person editing the page can choose from the following four options: Publish these modifications normally – This will avoid running any of the functions in this plugin and publish the changes the way they would normally be published. This is always the default. Save these changes as a revision, but don’t notify anyone – This will revert the page or post to the version that was already published, saving the modifications as a post revision. This will not send out any notification emails. Save these revisions as a draft and notify reviewer – This will revert the page or post to the version that was already published, saving the modifications as a post revision. This will also send out an email message to the email address entered in the options. Publish these modifications, but notify a reviewer that changes were made – This will publish the changes normally, but will still dispatch a notification message to the email address provided. If the third or fourth option is selected, a box will appear asking the user to provide an email address (or multiple addresses separated by commas) to which to send the notification message. If that box is left empty, the plugin will attempt to retrieve the value of the “dpn_reviewers” option from the individual site. If that option doesn’t exist, the “dpn_reviewers” option will be retrieved from the network (if installed in a multisite environment). You can edit those options in the Settings -> Writing and Network Admin -> Settings -> Network Settings (multisite) screens within the administrative area. If neither of those options exist, the email address of the site’s admin will be used. To Do Include multi-network activation options Implement the ability to add this functionality to custom post types Known Issues The interface to review and approve modifications (the default revision comparison built into WordPress) is not extremely user-friendly. Some training will most likely be necessary to teach reviewers how to identify and approve the appropriate revisions. If multiple reviewers are notified of modifications, there is no easy way to let them all know when one of them reviews and approves (or potentially rejects) the changes. There is no interface currently available to delete revisions, which means there is no way (other than taking no action at all) to actually reject any changes. When a post is revised multiple times before the revisions are approved, the changes begin to cascade.