Mai Publish Requirements

Require a featured image — and, over time, other per-post-type rules — before a post can be published.

What it does

Enforces publish requirements only on the publish transition (a post moving into publish/future from a non-live status). Editing a post that is already live is never blocked or unpublished.

• Block editor / REST — the save is aborted with an inline error notice listing what's missing.
• Quick Edit / bulk edit / classic editor — the post is kept as Pending (these paths can't surface an inline error) and the reason is shown as an admin notice.

Rules

v1 ships one rule: Featured image required. Rules are a seam — each rule is a small class that answers "does this post pass, and if not, what's the message?" Adding a rule later (e.g. category required, single category, minimum length) is a drop-in addition; no changes to the gate plumbing.

Configuration

Settings → Publish Requirements — choose which post types each rule applies to.

For developers, applicability is also filterable:

// Add a post type to the default list a rule applies to.
add_filter( 'mai_publish_requirements_rule_post_types', function ( array $types, string $rule_id ): array {
    if ( 'featured_image' === $rule_id ) {
        $types[] = 'page';
    }
    return $types;
}, 10, 2 );

// Register a custom rule.
add_filter( 'mai_publish_requirements_rules', function ( array $rules ): array {
    $rules[] = new My_Custom_Rule();
    return $rules;
} );

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 8.2+

Updates

Tag-based updates via Plugin Update Checker against maithemewp/mai-publish-requirements. Sites update when a new GitHub release/tag is published.