PublishPress Checklists: Pre-Publishing Approval Checklist - Validate Post Requirements

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of characters for the Title in your WordPress content. If the Title isn't the correct length, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. Many sites require the title to be around 55 to 60 characters long. This is often because that is the optimal length to show in Google's search results.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• Find the Title option.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable this title option, it will be visible when you edit content. If your title is not the correct length, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If your title is the correct length, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar/

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of words for the content of your WordPress posts. If the content isn't the correct length, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. Many WordPress sites want to specify a certain number of words for all their posts. For example, the Yoast SEO plugin recommends that you aim for around 1,000-1,500 words.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable the content option, it will be visible when you edit content. If your content text is not the correct length, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If your content text is the correct length, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of categories for your WordPress posts. If the correct number of categories aren't added, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. Having the correct number of categories is important for your site's SEO. By default, Categories are only available on WordPress Posts. However, with the "TaxoPress" plugin you can add Categories to other post types and so you will be able to use the tutorial for those post types too.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable the categories option, it will be visible when you edit content. If you add an incorrect number of categories, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If you add a correct number of categories, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of tags for your WordPress posts. This feature also supports taxonomy terms from other plugins or custom post types. If the correct number of tags aren't added, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. Having the correct number of tags is important for your site's SEO.

• Go to Checklists > Settings. If you are using a custom post type or plugin, any available taxonomies will show as options.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable this tags option, it will be visible when you edit content. If you add an incorrect number of tags, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If you add a correct number of tags, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of characters for the Excerpts in your WordPress content. If the Excerpt isn't the correct length, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. The Excerpt field is a very useful feature in WordPress. The Excerpt is an optional summary or description of the main content.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable the Excerpt option, it will be visible when you edit content. If your Excerpt text is not the correct length, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If your Excerpt text is the correct length, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of internal links in your WordPress content. If the content does not have the correct number of internal links, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. We define “internal links” as any "a href" link to another page on your site. Many sites want a large number of internal links because it can improve their site's search engine optimization.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable this internal links option, it will be visible when you edit content. If you do not have the correct number of internal links, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If you do have the correct number of internal links, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require a maximum and minimum number of external links in your WordPress content. If the content does not have the correct number of external links, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. We define “external links” as any "a href" link to URL on another website. Many sites want to prevent a large number of external links because it can harm their site's search engine optimization.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable this external links option, it will be visible when you edit content. If you do not have the correct number of external links, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If you do have the correct number of external links, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can ensure that all the links in your content (both external and internal) use a valid link format. This feature won't check the destination URL, but it will check the link format to make sure you haven't used URLs such as htpps// or .nt.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• If you enable this link validation option, it will be visible when you edit content. If you have broken links in your content, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If you do not have broken links, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require that all the images have ALT text in your WordPress content. If an image is missing the ALT text, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. ALT text (short for “alternative text”) is useful because it describes images to visitors who are unable to see them. Visually impaired users often use screen readers that can read ALT text to better understand an on-page image.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for “Min” and “Max”.
• If you enable the ALT text option, it will be visible when you edit content. If your images are missing ALT text, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If all your images have ALT text, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require that all your posts have a Featured image. If the image is missing, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. Many sites require a featured image for blog posts because an image is important for sharing on social media.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?"
• If you enable this Featured image option, it will be visible when you edit content. If your Featured image box is empty, this task will be marked in red in the sidebar. If your Featured image box has an image, this task will be marked in green in the sidebar.

With this requirement, you can stop content from being published unless it has been approved by a user in a particular role. This is an excellent way to allow some users to “sign off” on content before it is published.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• In the final box, you can choose which roles can approve posts. If a user is in one of the selected roles, they will see a checkbox. If the user approves the post, they can check the box and the content can be published.

With the PublishPress Checklists plugin, you can require that site's content meets minimum standards with the Yoast SEO plugin. If the content doesn't meet those standards, you can choose to show a warning, or prevent the post from being published. Many sites require that their content meets Yoast SEO standards. This helps ensure that their content is optimized for search engines. The Checklists plugin integrates with the SEO and Readability features in Yoast SEO.

• Go to Checklists > Settings.
• You can choose from “Disabled, Recommended, or Required” options.
• You can choose “Who can ignore this task?“
• You can enter choices for both options. Choose either “OK” (yellow/orange) or “Good” (green).
• If you enable the Yoast SEO option, they will be visible when you edit content. If you don't meet the minimum requirements, the checklist items will be shown in red.