It can be challenging to control several authors on a WordPress blog. The efficient operation of a multi-author blog depends on an effective editorial workflow.
Our users frequently ask us for advice on how to enhance their editing workflow while managing a big WordPress blog with multiple authors.
Fortunately, there is a fantastic plugin for it.
In this post, we’ll demonstrate how to use PublishPress to successfully manage your editorial workflow.
This will make it simple for you to work together with your editorial team within WordPress. Additionally, you will be able to plan your editorial calendar, carry out your content strategy, and work more efficiently.
Ready? Let’s get going.
The PublishPress plugin needs to be installed and activated initially. See our step-by-step tutorial on installing a WordPress plugin for more information.
The plugin functions right out of the box, but as we go along, we’ll go over various tweaking options in each part.
Defining your editorial workflow will be the first step.
Define Your Workflow Stages with Custom Statuses
The “Custom Statuses” feature of PublishPress enables you to specify the phases of your workflow.
The plugin adds various more post and page statuses in addition to the standard WordPress post statuses including Draft, Pending review, and Published.
- Pitch – Author offers a post or article idea.
- Assigned – A writer is given credit for a post.
- Posts’ default draft and autosave status is “Draft.”
- In progress – A piece of writing is currently being worked on. used when conducting initial research and creating an outline
- A manuscript has been sent to the editors for evaluation before publishing.
- Published – A piece of writing is released
- Scheduled – A piece of content is slated for release at a later time.
According to the article’s state in your workflow at the moment, you and its authors can select a status. On the edit screen, beneath the document menu, is where you’ll find the status option.
By clicking the Quick Edit option beneath a post on the Posts » All Posts page, you can also modify the status of a post.
You must modify custom statuses to create your own workflow, right?
You can also design your own unique statuses using PublishPress. Simply navigate to the “Statuses” tab on the PublishPress » Settings page.
After that, use the “Add New” option to build your individual process status. For your custom status, you must first add a name and a description before selecting a color and an icon.
To save your changes, don’t forget to click the “Add new status” button. This personalized status is now available for use in posts.
You can edit your posts by adding comments.
For any multi-author blog, team communication is essential. In addition to notifications, PublishPress offers the option for editorial comments.
In essence, editorial comments let writers and editors have private conversations while using threaded commenting inside the WordPress admin dashboard. Below the post editor, authors and editors have the option to add comments.
In WordPress, team members can make editorial comments to posts. When a new remark is added for a post they are following or editing, they will receive an alert.
Managing Content Progress Notifications
You can use PublishPress to send automatic notifications for editorial comments and content progress.
When an author modifies the status of a post, messages about content progress are provided. For instance, when a post is moved from being a draft to being under review.
By going to the PublishPress » Notifications tab, you may edit existing notifications and add new ones.
You may view a list of the current notification workflows on this page. To make your own unique notice, click the “Add New” option.
You can decide who will receive the notification, when it will be sent, and for what kind of content.
The topic and message of the notification email are also editable. The practical shortcodes are available in the right column for usage in your email message.
Editorial Metadata Should Be Added to Blog Posts
You can supplement your blog entries with additional helpful information using the editorial metadata tool. You may easily add new posts or alter existing ones to reveal the editorial metadata elements.
The plugin automatically adds the “First draft date” and the “Assignment details” meta fields. Additionally, you can design and add your own metadata fields.
Simply click the Metadata tab on the PublishPress » Settings page in your WordPress admin.
After that, select the “Add New” tab to add fresh editorial metadata. For your unique editorial metadata, you can add a label, description, and form field type from this point.
To save your changes, don’t forget to click the “Add New Metadata Term” button.
You can now write posts using your personalized editorial metadata field.
PublishPress’s Editorial Calendar Management
An editorial calendar that you plan and manage allows you to see your publishing schedule from above.
You may monitor the development of the content and ensure that you are publishing on schedule.
For this, many editing teams use Asana or Google Calendar, two task management programs. You may use PublishPress to monitor and control your editorial calendar directly from the WordPress backend.
The calendar displays all of the posts that are planned for publication, along with information about their current status. Posts’ planned dates can also be changed by dragging and dropping them.
You can also quickly schedule a post for that day by clicking the “Click to create” option.
Add a Content Checklist Before Publication
Pre-publish content checks can be created and added using PublishPress‘ premium add-on, which is well worth the money. Install and enable the “Content Checklist” extension immediately.
As a next step, go to PublishPress » Settings and select the Checklist tab.
From this point, you can choose the post kinds for which you want the content checklist to appear. The next step is to decide what will happen if none of the things on the checklist are completed.
You can begin adding checklist items below that. Limit the amount of categories, tags, the main image, and any other additions you want to make, for instance.
You may edit any post on your website to see your content checklist in action once you’ve finished creating it.
Other Qualities
It includes premium add-ons in addition to the normal PublishPress capabilities so you may expand the functionality of your website.
The extra features listed below are some of those you can activate utilizing their premium version.
- Add a content checklist for your WooCommerce products using this tool.
- Multiple authors — Lets you credit several writers for a single post.
- You may control which users can perform specific actions using permissions.
- Get PublishPress notifications in Slack Reminders with the help of Slack’s support team.
We sincerely hope that this post has improved your multi-author WordPress site’s editorial workflow.You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to get more search traffic to your website.
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