Question: How do you make it so a WordPress Author requires a post to be approved before publication?
I’m currently running a community-based site with a few authors. We collaborate as a group, but the site is run like a business, and we like to make mutual decisions, after a recent incident, we have disabled access to authors.
I was looking into a way we could have authors submit their post, but it only appears on the site once approved by an admin/supervisor? Surely this must exist, or would we have to have separate internal processes outside of WordPress?
Answer
This is a perfect example of where you can use the Contributor role built into the WordPress core.
Contributors are still listed as authors on the public post, it’s just they don’t have the same privileges as those given the Author role in the administration panel.
To assign the Contributor role to a user, click the “Users” menu option in the WordPress Admin Panel, and simply select “Contributor” from the drop-down list of role options.

In short, the Contributor role allows them to write and manage their own posts but they can’t publish them.
A user with the Editor or Administrator role would need to publish the post for it to go live on the website. Once live, the authorship of the post is still attributed to the contributor.