How to Use the Pending Review Status in WordPress

How to Use the Pending Review Status in WordPress

One of our members was wanting an efficient way to track which content needs review, so we created this tutorial for him.

WordPress has really useful features for content creation and maintenance. One of those features is the core “Pending Review” feature. “Pending Review” is one of two default statuses in WordPress, in addition to “Draft”. Click here to see the difference between Pending Review and Draft.

We’ll also show you how to use a really powerful plugin called PublishPress.


Option #1. Use the WordPress core

  • When editing a new post or page, edit the “Status” field in the “Publish” section.
  • You’ll see that “Pending Review” is one of the checkboxes:

pending review

  • When you’re ready for it to be reviewed, click the “Save as Pending” link.
  • I have the “Publish” button, make sure you don’t click it.
save as pending

Now you have content that is not published, but is marked as “Pending Review”. Here’s how you find all that content.

  • Go to Pages > All Pages.
  • Click the “Pending” tab on top.
  • You’ll see a list of Pages that need review:
Pending Review pages in WordPress

The “Pending Review” status is also used in the PublishPress Revisions plugin which allows users to submit a revision for review. Those revisions will be set to “Pending Review”. A higher-level user can then come along and moderate the revision.


Option #2: The PublishPress plugin

The PublishPress plugin offers a more sophisticated range of options than the WordPress core.

PublishPress allows you to create your own status, or simply enhance the default “Pending Review” status. For more on PublishPress statuses, click here.

  • Install PublishPress into your WordPress site.
  • Go to PublishPress > Settings.
  • Click the “Statuses” tab.
  • On the right hand side, you see all the WordPress status options, plus some new choices such as “Assigned” and “In Progress”.

publishpress statuses including Pending Review

On the right hand side of the image above, you can see that 1 post is in the “Pending Review” status. Click the “1” link and you’ll see that post:

All pending review posts in WordPress

  •  On the main “Statuses” page we saw above, click “Edit” under “Pending Review”:

edit pending review in WordPress

  • Here you can edit the “Pending Review” settings and choose a description, color and icon:

Customize your pending review settings in WordPress

These custom statuses make it very easy to see your content on PublishPress’ calendar screen.

In the image below, you can see the dropdown that allows you to choose only content in the “Pending Review” status. You can also see your post with the orange background and the custom “Pending Review” icon.

calendar wordpress with pending review post

Author

  • Nick Savov

    Nick is the Director of Support at OSTraining and you can find him in almost every area of the site, from answering support requests and account questions to creating tutorials and software.

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ch3mn3y
ch3mn3y
5 years ago

Is there any way to get link of post pending for review?
I have few post waiting for editor, but some of them mentions the other, so I would like to link them in the text. However I don’t know their addresses to do it.
Are they somewhere available? Coz I cannot find them 🙁

Grifasaurus
Grifasaurus
5 years ago

Is this compatible with WordPress 5.0? I installed it and it seems to have changed my WordPress to the old format rather than the new block layout?

steve
5 years ago
Reply to  Grifasaurus

Hi Grifasaurus. 

The new block layout removed a key feature that the plugin relied on. I think they’ll have a Gutenberg-ready release next week https://publishpress.com/blog/gutenberg/

Grifasaurus
Grifasaurus
5 years ago
Reply to  steve

Awesome thank you! I’ll keep an eye out for it 🙂

Marc
Marc
4 years ago

When using Block Editor, the pending review option isn’t visible for me at all, across any of my websites.
It’s very odd, since on one site that I write for, pending review can be seen by other authors, but not by me.
So far, I’ve been unable to find a toggle for pending review in any of the settings.
Any hints on this would be much appreciated, thanks.

Uriel
Uriel
3 years ago

Please help me! Ive been trying for days to let user submitted posts on wordpress publish immediately without being “pending” so me (the admin) needs to press “publish” for every post. How can i achieve this!

Monika
Monika
2 years ago

How can I make the ad pending but visiable to google ?   Not visiable on the website but url will work to see etc how do I do ? 

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