Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

  • Books
    • Content Strategy for WordPress (2015)
    • WordPress for Web Developers (2013)
    • Beginning WordPress 3 (2010)
  • Blog
    • Fascism Watch (2016-17)
    • Content Modeling for WordPress series
    • WordPress Hidden Gems series
  • Work
    • Portfolio
    • Services
    • WordPress Plugins
    • WordPress Themes
    • Presentations and Interviews
    • on GitHub →
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Content Audit

The Content Audit plugin allows you to perform a content inventory right in the WordPress Edit screens.

You can mark content as redundant, outdated, trivial, or in need of a review for SEO or style. The plugin creates a custom taxonomy (like a new set of categories) that’s visible only from the admin screens. Since the content attributes work just like categories, you can remove the built-in ones and add your own if you like.

You can also assign a content owner (distinct from the original author) and keep notes. The IDs are revealed on the Edit screens so you can keep track of your content even if you change titles and permalinks. The plugin supports custom post types.

The Content Audit plugin creates three new filters on the Edit screens: author, content owner, and content status. This should make it easy to narrow your focus to just a few pages at a time. When you’re viewing all your posts in Excerpt mode, the audit notes will be visible.

You can display the audit details to logged-in editors on the front end if you want, either above or below the content. You can style the audit message.

There is an option to automatically mark content as outdated after a period of time (a month, six months, a year, whatever). You can then set up email notifications, which will automatically alert the content owner (or the original author, if no owner has been designated) that the content needs to be reviewed. Each owner/author will be emailed a list, sorted by content type, with permalinks to the outdated entries. If the content doesn’t need to be updated, the user can remove it from the email report by unchecking the “Outdated” box and saving the post.

The Content Audit plugin supports the Google Analytics Dashboard plugin, which shows a sparkline of each post/page’s traffic. This will give you some idea of how popular an article is, which might influence your decisions.

download at wordpress.org get support at wordpress.org donate to future development

Content Audit Screenshots

The options screen
the Edit Pages screen with the content audit columns and filter dropdowns
the Edit Page screen with the content audit notes, owner, and status boxes

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

Kindle Nook iBooks Kobo Smashwords

WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

Copyright © 2022 Stephanie Leary