# WordPress Publishing Workflow Checklist

Use this checklist before allowing any automation to publish to WordPress.

## Ownership and brief

- [ ] A named owner is accountable for the article.
- [ ] The target reader, search intent, offer, and success metric are explicit.
- [ ] Source material is attached and factual claims can be verified.
- [ ] Brand, legal, privacy, and prohibited-claim rules are written down.

## Draft and review

- [ ] The draft answers the reader's question before selling.
- [ ] Quotes, statistics, and product claims link to a source.
- [ ] Internal links, external links, title, description, slug, and canonical are reviewed.
- [ ] A human approves the exact artifact that will be published.

## Credentials and media

- [ ] WordPress uses a scoped application password, never a password in a prompt.
- [ ] Secrets are stored in a credential store and are redacted from logs.
- [ ] The featured image has documented ownership, useful alt text, and web-sized dimensions.
- [ ] A missing image or credential stops the public write.

## Publish and verify

- [ ] The workflow creates one post and is safe to retry without duplicates.
- [ ] It verifies HTTP status, title, author, image, canonical, and public URL after publishing.
- [ ] The receipt records the post ID, URL, author, status, and publish time.
- [ ] Failures have a clear retry, rollback, or manual fallback owner.

## Improve

- [ ] Monthly review covers quality, cycle time, approval delays, failures, and search performance.
- [ ] Lessons are added to the next brief instead of remaining in chat history.

Free interactive audit: https://www.promarkia.com/wordpress-publishing-workflow-audit/

Promarkia: https://www.promarkia.com/integrations/wordpress/