PublishPress is a suite of WordPress plugins for content teams that need more than WordPress’s basic draft/publish workflow. Where WordPress gives you Draft, Pending Review, and Published, PublishPress adds custom statuses (Pitch, Assigned, Draft, In Review, Approved), an editorial calendar showing all content planned across dates, and a notification system that alerts editors and authors when content moves through the workflow. For a publication with multiple writers, editors, and a scheduled content plan, PublishPress makes the editorial process manageable.
The PublishPress Suite Components
PublishPress is not a single plugin but a suite of separate plugins that work together:
- PublishPress Planner – editorial calendar and custom statuses (free)
- PublishPress Authors – multiple author attribution per post (free)
- PublishPress Capabilities – detailed user role management (free)
- PublishPress Revisions – scheduled revisions and approval for changes to published content
- PublishPress Future – automatically expire or change post status at a future date
Install only the components relevant to your workflow. A small blog with one editor needs PublishPress Planner for calendar visibility. A large publication with multiple authors needs Planner, Authors, and Capabilities together.
Step 1: Configure Custom Statuses
Go to PublishPress -> Statuses. The default statuses beyond WordPress’s own are: Pitch (idea submitted), Assigned (assigned to a writer), In Progress (being written), Draft (ready for review), Pending Review (with editor), and Approved (cleared to publish). Add, remove, or rename statuses to match your actual workflow. The status names appear in the post editor as options alongside Draft and Published.
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Step 2: Set Up the Editorial Calendar
Go to PublishPress -> Calendar. The calendar shows all posts across their scheduled publish dates with status color coding. Drag posts between dates to reschedule them. Click an empty date to create a new post scheduled for that day. The calendar view gives content managers and editors visibility into what is scheduled, what is in progress, and where the content pipeline has gaps.
Filter the calendar by post type, category, author, or status to focus on specific parts of the content plan. An editor reviewing this week’s scheduled posts filters to Approved status and this week’s date range to see exactly what goes live without browsing through hundreds of posts in different stages.
Step 3: Notifications Configuration
PublishPress Planner sends email notifications when post status changes. Go to PublishPress -> Notifications. Configure notification rules: when a post moves to “Pending Review”, notify the assigned editor. When a post is Approved, notify the author. When a post is Published, notify the content manager. These automated notifications replace the manual “hey, your post is ready for review” Slack messages that interrupt workflows.
Multiple Authors With PublishPress Authors
WordPress natively supports one author per post. PublishPress Authors adds multi-author support – assign multiple authors to a post, each appearing in the byline. This is useful for collaborative pieces, guest posts with the editor credited, and roundup articles with multiple contributors. Install PublishPress Authors separately and configure the author byline display in the plugin settings to match your theme’s author display format.
PublishPress Future: Auto-Expiring Content
PublishPress Future is a separate free plugin in the suite that automatically changes post status or unpublishes posts at a set future date. Install it when you publish time-sensitive content: a sale announcement that should revert to draft after the promotion ends, a seasonal page that should unpublish after the season, or news coverage that should be archived after 90 days.
Configure the future action in the post editor’s PublishPress Future meta box: select a date, choose the action (change to draft, delete, make private, change category), and save. The plugin handles the rest automatically via WordPress cron. For editorial teams managing campaign content with hard end dates, this automation prevents the common problem of expired promotions staying visible because nobody remembered to unpublish them.
Integrating With Slack for Editorial Notifications
PublishPress Planner’s notification system sends emails by default. For teams that work primarily in Slack, the PublishPress Slack notification add-on (Pro) routes editorial notifications to Slack channels. When a post moves to “Pending Review,” a Slack notification appears in the #editorial channel. When content is approved, the author gets a Slack DM. This replaces email notifications with the communication channel teams already monitor, reducing the chance that editorial status changes get missed in a crowded inbox.