Architecture Overview

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This document gives a high-level overview of how Content Lifecycle Manager is organized in code.

Main Structure

The plugin is organized into these main areas:

The Core layer contains the main lifecycle logic:

This is where the content lifecycle behavior is defined.

The Admin layer contains:

This is the main area for list views, overview screens, and settings screens

The Editor layer powers the Block Editor sidebar panel.

It includes:

The save flow is intentionally explicit so normal post updates do not silently change lifecycle data.

The Ideas layer contains:

This feature is intentionally lightweight and separate from the main managed content tables.

The Onboarding layer handles setup for existing content.

It is responsible for:

The Support layer contains shared helpers and utility classes used across the plugin.

Typical responsibilities include:

The two most important behavior patterns in the plugin are:

computed lifecycle status rather than manually stored status
explicit maintenance actions rather than automatic review updates during normal saves

Those two choices shape much of the plugin behavior and should be preserved when extending the codebase.