Pre-Publish Check

WordPress has this little bit of optional UI where a panel slides in when hitting the Publish button on a post. It’s like one of those “Are you sure you wanna delete this?” warnings designed to build in one last check before pushing content live.

That’s been around for a long while now. I’m unable to remember or find when it was introduced but what’s interesting is that the panel has a newer feature that checks for external images embedded in the posts. If it finds any, it asks whether you’d like to upload the images to your own Media Library. You know, protect against the downsides of hotlinking assets, like the owner removing the file from the server, or worse, replacing the file with something completely unexpected, possibly inappropriate.

This came up because I typically copy-paste content from Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, or some other content editor when collaborating with others on new CSS-Tricks articles. Images in those docs are automatically inserted into the page when pasting them in, but they are sourced externally by Dropbox Paper or whatever.

It’d be awesome if WordPress automatically uploaded those images on paste, but I get why they might not to go there. That’s where the pre-publish panel comes in and gives me a heads-up in addition to a shortcut for uploading the media right there without leaving my place. Fantastic!

I suppose the only way it might be better is to do that check in the Image Block’s settings. Not everyone opts into the pre-publish check in their user preferences and will miss that warning. And I’d reckon (albeit on gut feeling) it’s a warning most content writers and editors want to see, regardless of preference.

Aside: Eric Karkovack’s post on WP Minute highlights why small UI changes in WordPress are a big deal and need better communication.