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WordPress powers 43% of websites, making it a dominant force in content management. However, its open-source flexibility can be both a strength and a challenge. While it allows extensive customization, the lack of built-in workflow structure often leads to a flawed editorial workflow in WordPress.
WordPress publishing teams face many challenges, from too many plugin options to poor communication and security risks. Without real-time collaboration, they depend on external tools, causing version conflicts and lost edits. Confusing user roles, outdated tools, and too many plugins make content management even harder.
This guide will act as a practical action plan to help you:
- Eliminate collaboration conflicts.
- Automate approvals and feedback.
- Prevent technical disasters (such as lost drafts or plugin crashes).
- Scale workflows as your team grows.
Let’s tackle these workflow bottlenecks one step at a time.
How workflow bottlenecks impact WordPress publishing teams
For WordPress publishing teams, an unstructured workflow can cause significant challenges in efficiency, collaboration, and content consistency. Here’s how these bottlenecks impact content teams:
Disorganized workflows: Without standardized tools, teams may use different plugins, page builders, and drafting methods, leading to formatting issues, version conflicts, and wasted time fixing inconsistencies.
Collaboration chaos: WordPress lacks native real-time collaboration, which results in overwritten changes and scattered feedback across emails, Slack, and Google Docs, making it hard to track revisions and approvals.
Security risks: Multiple plugins for SEO, social sharing, and media management can lead to security vulnerabilities if outdated or incompatible.
Unclear roles & permissions: Without proper role management, overlapping access can lead to accidental deletions or unapproved content going live.
Inconsistent branding & formatting: When team members use different themes, fonts, and layouts, branding inconsistencies arise, creating a disjointed user experience.
Lost content & approval delays: Without clear ownership tracking, missed deadlines, lost drafts, and duplicated work become common challenges.
To overcome these issues, teams need a structured workflow, collaboration tools like Multicollab, clear role definitions, and a consistent content and design strategy.
Common editorial workflow bottlenecks (and how to fix them)
1. Collaboration conflicts in content drafting
The Problem: Multiple authors editing the same post leads to version chaos. WordPress’ default editor lacks real-time collaboration, forcing teams to reconcile conflicting drafts manually.
Solution:
Multicollab: Enables Google Docs-style collaboration within Gutenberg, offering real-time collaboration, role-based access, and Slack integration.
Unlike the default editor, which lacks multi-user editing capabilities, Multicollab allows multiple authors to work on the same post simultaneously, with inline comments, suggestion mode, and activity tracking. This ensures that edits are transparent, feedback is structured, and teams no longer have to bring together the drafts manually. By streamlining the content creation process, Multicollab enhances efficiency and keeps editorial workflows organized.
2. Inefficient feedback management
The Problem: When feedback is scattered across emails, Slack messages, Google Docs, and spreadsheets, keeping track of necessary changes becomes a nightmare.
Teams waste time hunting down comments, leading to miscommunication, overlooked edits, and version conflicts. Without a centralized system, collaboration becomes inefficient, and valuable insights can get lost in the shuffle. This fragmented workflow slows down content production, making it harder to maintain consistency and quality across projects.
Solutions:
PublishPress Planner’s Editorial Comments: This plugin feature allows writers and editors to leave private, threaded comments under posts in the WordPress admin area. This streamlines collaboration by enabling discussions on necessary changes before publishing. Users can also notify specific team members about comments and manage the feature through the Planner settings.
Multicollab‘s Inline commenting and Slack/Email notifications: The plugin enhances collaboration in WordPress by offering inline comments directly within the Gutenberg editor—something PublishPress Planner’s Editorial Comments lacks. Instead of leaving comments in a separate metabox, Multicollab allows users to highlight specific text, suggest changes in real time, and tag team members for feedback. This makes discussions more contextual, reducing confusion and streamlining the review process.
Plus, with features like Suggestion mode, Slack notifications, email alerts, and activity tracking, teams stay informed without having to dig through menus or switch between tools.
3. Lack of a clear editorial calendar
The Problem: Without a shared calendar, teams miss deadlines, publish overlapping content, or struggle with seasonal campaigns.
Deadlines get missed, multiple team members might accidentally work on similar topics, and seasonal campaigns lose their impact due to poor timing. Without a clear schedule, teams struggle to maintain consistency, leading to last-minute rushes and inefficient workflows.
Solutions:
Editorial Calendar, PublishPress Planner By PublishPress: PublishPress Planner is a powerful content planning tool for WordPress, offering a Content Calendar, Content Overview, and Kanban-style Content Board to streamline editorial workflows. The Content Calendar provides a visual schedule for planning and publishing, while the Content Overview helps filter content by status, category, or author. The Content Board functions as a kanban board, allowing teams to manage content progress with drag-and-drop functionality—all within WordPress, eliminating the need for external tools like Trello or Notion.
Editorial Calendar by Zack Grossbart: The Editorial Calendar provides a clear, visual overview of your content schedule, making it easy to plan and manage posts. With drag-and-drop scheduling, quick edits, and draft organization, you can seamlessly adjust publishing dates and keep your content strategy on track. It’s a powerful tool for staying organized, ensuring consistency, and simplifying collaboration for teams.
4. Lost edits or deleted content
The Problem: Accidental overwrites, lost drafts, and unlimited post revisions can bloat the database and disrupt publishing schedules.
Accidental overwrites and lost drafts disrupt publishing, while too many revisions clutter WordPress. Without proper version control, important edits can disappear, causing delays and confusion. There is a need for a tool that monitors all editorial activity and keeps accountability in check.
Solution:
WP Activity Log: WP Activity Log tracks all site changes in real time. It logs post edits, user actions, and metadata updates, providing a clear record of who changed what and when. If content is lost or modified unintentionally, admins can quickly identify and restore changes. With detailed event tracking, including user logins, plugin updates, and database modifications, this plugin enhances accountability and security, ensuring no important content is accidentally overwritten or deleted.
Multicollab’s Reports and Activity: Multicollab’s Advanced Dashboard and Activity Timeline provide a clear record of all edits, comments, and suggestions. With quick snapshot reporting and user-specific permissions, teams can track changes, manage revisions efficiently, and control who can accept or reject edits. This ensures content remains organized, reduces unnecessary revisions, and keeps publishing schedules on track.
5. Unoptimized media slowing down your site
The Problem: Large image files impact site speed, leading to poor user experience and SEO penalties.
Slow websites rank lower in search results as Google prioritizes fast-loading pages. For editorial teams managing high volumes of content, manually compressing and optimizing images can be time-consuming and inefficient, leading to inconsistent performance across the site.
Solutions:
Smush: This helps content teams optimize images by compressing, resizing, and converting them to WebP without losing quality. It enhances site speed, SEO rankings, and user experience with bulk optimization, lazy loading, and automated compression. The plugin also detects incorrectly sized images and optimizes all PNG and JPEG files without impacting server performance.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer: This plugin optimizes images and PDFs with one click, reducing file sizes without sacrificing quality. It enhances website performance with bulk compression, lazy loading, and automatic WebP/AVIF conversion, leading to faster load times and better SEO rankings. The plugin works seamlessly across various WordPress sites, ensuring minimal server impact while improving user experience and search visibility.
6. Plugin conflicts and bloat
The Problem: Excessive or outdated plugins add unnecessary code, increasing page load times and server resource usage, which slows down WordPress sites.
In editorial workflows, plugin bloat can lead to conflicts, causing crashes, slow performance, or broken features within the WordPress editor. This disrupts content creation, approval processes, and publishing schedules, making collaboration inefficient and delaying content production.
- It is important that teams ensure that their sites are always backed up at a recurring frequency.
- Conduct quarterly plugin audits and remove unnecessary ones.
- Merge functionalities where possible.
Solution:
WP Staging: This plugin allows website administrators to create a staging environment where they can safely test new plugins, updates, and configurations without affecting the live site. By identifying potential conflicts in a controlled setting, users can prevent crashes, broken functionality, and security risks before implementing changes.
7. Unstructured approval processes
The Problem: Undefined approval workflows lead to missed steps and publishing delays.
When multiple stakeholders—such as writers, editors, legal teams, and marketing managers—are involved, the absence of a structured review process often leads to overlooked revisions, missed deadlines, and inconsistent content quality. Untracked feedback and manual approvals further complicate the process, making collaboration inefficient.
- Define a three-step approval process (Writer → Editor → Legal Reviewer → Publisher).
- Set automated email reminders for overdue tasks.
Solution:
Oasis Workflow: The drag-and-drop workflow designer plugin ensures accountability with role-based task assignments, custom statuses, and detailed process history tracking. The plugin includes automated email reminders and due dates to prevent delays while offering a centralized inbox for users to manage tasks efficiently. By structuring approvals into defined stages—assignment, review, and publishing—it eliminates bottlenecks, reducing missed steps and ensuring timely content publication.
8. Last-minute content requests
The Problem: Unexpected content demands derail planned workflows, increasing stress and reducing content quality.
This reactive approach compromises content quality, consistency, and overall efficiency, making it harder to meet deadlines and maintain strategic goals.
- Implement a “Content Emergency” protocol to prioritize urgent tasks.
- Push back on last-minute requests when necessary.
Solution:
Gutenberg Blocks with AI by Kadence WP: Kadence Blocks, enhanced with AI, streamlines last-minute content requests by enabling rapid content creation and design without coding. The AI-powered inline editor refines text in real time, ensuring quality while meeting tight deadlines. Pre-built design patterns and smart keyword optimization help teams produce visually engaging content efficiently, reducing stress and workflow disruptions.
9. Inconsistent formatting and branding
The Problem: Different writers on the team end up using inconsistent fonts, tones, and layouts.
Without a clear style guide or an effective tone of voice directive in place, writers may use different fonts, tones, and layouts, leading to inconsistencies that weaken brand authority. A lack of uniformity can confuse readers, make content appear unprofessional, and dilute brand recognition across platforms.
- Define brand fonts, colors, and tone of voice in a shared document.
- Use pre-designed content blocks for uniformity.
Solution:
PublishPress Checklists: This plugin ensures consistent formatting and branding by enforcing content quality standards before publication. It allows you to set mandatory requirements for word count, featured images, taxonomy terms, internal/external links, and readability.
The plugin integrates with OpenAI to analyze content for clarity, tone, and grammar. If the content doesn’t meet set requirements, the checklist marks it as incomplete. Users can create custom prompts like “Is the content clear?” or “Does it use correct grammar?”, ensuring high-quality, brand-aligned content before publishing.
Final thoughts
Streamlining your editorial workflow in WordPress requires the right combination of tools, structured processes, and team-wide collaboration. By addressing these common bottlenecks with efficient solutions that we have mentioned above, your team can truly focus on producing high-quality content without workflow disruptions.
So, if you are ready to take control of your WordPress workflow, you better start implementing these fixes today!
