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Draft, pending review, published, private, and schedule.
^ That’s all we get in WordPress.
And here’s the thing…
Three of those five statuses are for finished posts.
That means you have to describe your entire drafting process with “Draft” and “Pending review.” Even for an individual blogger, this doesn’t offer enough flexibility.
In this article, you’ll find a small set of plugins that add new post statuses to WordPress, so you can get more control over your editorial workflow.
Some of these plugins add a pre-defined set of new post statuses, and others let you enter your own.
Regardless of which plugin you choose, your editorial workflow is about to get much better.
Post status plugins
Below you’ll find a mixture of free, freemium, and premium plugins.
In addition to post statuses, you’ll also find options for content calendars, post checklists, and more.
Here are my top picks for the best custom post status WordPress plugins.
1. Strive Content Calendar
Plugin Description
Strive is a new WordPress plugin I developed myself that adds a content calendar to your WP dashboard and new post statuses.
The problem with statuses added by WordPress is that they’re only good for understanding the visibility of your posts. For instance, they can tell you if your post is still a private draft or publicly published.
Strive adds four new statuses that are made specifically for understanding the state of your drafts. These statuses are:
- Not started
- Writing
- Editing
- Complete
The status switcher is available right in the post editor, so you can update it as you work:
It is compatible with both the Gutenberg editor and the Classic Editor.
Strive only provides four statuses, but it is robust enough for complex editorial workflows because it also includes custom checklists. Rather than creating a new status for every action the post requires, you can create custom tasks to be checked off from the post sidebar:
Unlike other plugins listed here, Strive doesn’t allow you to define new statuses, but it is the only one that includes checklists, which negates the need for additional statuses.
If you like what you see of Strive, you can click the link below to see all the features it includes for content creators.
2. Extended Post Status
Plugin Description
This simple plugin is a good choice you want to add a few new statuses to WordPress’ built-in statuses.
Once installed, you’ll find a new settings menu where you can add statuses using the same interface you use to create new categories and tags. You can decide if the status should show up in the Posts menu and if posts with this status should be publicly viewable or not. After you’ve added some new statuses, you can find them available in the normal post status changer in the Classic Editor and in a new sidebar section if you’re using the Gutenberg editor.
If you want to write your own custom status names and add as many as you want, you can’t go wrong with this plugin.
3. Mark Posts
Plugin Description
Mark Posts is a simple plugin that will make your Posts menu much more helpful for planning your content.
From the new Mark Posts settings menu, you’ll define your own “markers.” You can think of these as custom post statuses. Add as many as you’d like and give each one its own color.
Once you’ve created your custom markers, you can start assigning them to your posts. Using the sidebar in the post editor or the Quick Edit menu in the Posts page, you can assign each post any of the markers you’ve created. Then when you view the Posts menu, each post will have its background color updated to match its status. This colorization makes it so much easier to understand the current state of your posts and what you need to work on next.
4. PublishPress
Plugin Description
The last plugin I’ll recommend here is PublishPress. It adds a large toolkit for managing your content process, including custom statuses.
PublishPress gives you an interface for entering custom post statuses and shows them alongside WordPress’ default statuses. While it does make sense to add them like normal statuses, it means you have to use “draft,” “published,” and “pending review” along with the statuses you create, which will mainly be for draft management. There is a dropdown selector where you can update the post status from the editor (works for both Gutenberg and the Classic Editor).
This will be a good choice for your site if you have a large team of writers and editors because it also includes editorial comments and post assignments, which help organize a team workflow.
Which post status plugin is best?
Did you find what you were looking for?
Strive is my top recommendation, and yes, I’m totally biased as the developer 😉 However, I sincerely believe it’s the best solution since it combines a simple set of post statuses with custom checklists to create a robust editorial system.
If you aren’t interested in checklists and content calendars, you might prefer the Extended Post Status plugin. It’s an extremely straightforward way to add custom statuses to your site.
Regardless of which plugin you choose, I want to thank you for checking out this collection of the finest custom post status plugins for WordPress.
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