At Human Made, we’re committed to building tools to empower WordPress users, and to raising the bar for content quality and accessibility. That’s why we’re excited to share the Human Made Publication Checklist plugin—an open source tool designed to ensure your WordPress posts meet all the essential publishing standards before going live.
What is the Publication Checklist?
The Publication Checklist is a powerful WordPress plugin that enforces pre-publishing conditions. For content-heavy enterprise sites, it’s a big challenge to ensure consistency across the board, but this plugin helps ensure every post adheres to quality benchmarks. Out of the box, it can:
- Verify that all images have descriptive alt text (crucial for accessibility).
- Ensure categories or tags are assigned.
- Enforce any custom rules you define.
And that’s just the beginning—the plugin is fully customisable to suit your unique requirements.
How does it work?
Getting started with the Publication Checklist is simple:
- Download the plugin: Head to the Human Made GitHub repository to download the Publication Checklist plugin. You’ll find comprehensive documentation to help you tailor the tool to your needs.
- Build, activate and customise: Build the assets in the plugin using
composer installandnpm run build. Once installed and activated, you can define the checklist items that matter most to your workflow. Whether it’s ensuring a minimum word count, confirming featured images are set, or checking for required metadata, you’re in control. - Test with the demo: For a hands-on demonstration, check out the Publication Checklist demo I’ve created below. It provides a working example of how the plugin’s features function in a real-world context.
The Publication Checklist in action
Let’s walk through this quick example:
- Create a Post: Start by drafting a new post in WordPress.
- Check for Issues: Upon saving the draft, the Publication Checklist will display a list of unmet conditions. For instance, it might flag missing alt text for an image.
- Resolve or ignore: You can either resolve the flagged issues or choose to bypass them (if permitted by your rules).
- Monitor progress: Use the handy sidebar to view checklist updates in real time as you make changes.
- Publish with confidence: Once all conditions are met, the checklist grants you the green light to publish.
The dashboard also features indicators for each post, highlighting any outstanding checklist items that need attention, which helps keep your editorial team on track and informed.
Why choose the Publication Checklist?
- Customisable: No two content workflows are the same. With the Publication Checklist, you can define rules that fit your specific publishing needs.
- Improves accessibility: Features like alt text enforcement help ensure your content is inclusive and accessible to all users.
- Open source: As part of our commitment to the open source community, the Publication Checklist is freely available for anyone to use, contribute to, or modify.
- Enhanced quality control: By standardising pre-publishing checks, this tool ensures your content meets the highest standards every time.
Our commitment to open source
At Human Made, open source isn’t just something we support: it’s part of our DNA. The Publication Checklist plugin reflects our dedication to creating tools that benefit the wider WordPress ecosystem. We welcome contributions, feedback, and feature requests from the community to make this plugin even better. You’ll find more information about our open source creds right here.
Ready to streamline your publishing workflow?
The Publication Checklist is designed to make content creation seamless, accessible, and reliable. Whether you’re managing a corporate blog or a media platform, this plugin ensures every piece of content aligns with your quality standards before it’s published.
Download the Human Made Publication Checklist plugin and experience the difference it can make to your publishing workflow.
Happy publishing!