FAQ & Troubleshooting

Requirements

What versions of WordPress are supported?

WordPress 6.6 or higher.

What PHP version is required?

PHP 8.1 or higher.

Is ACF required?

Yes. ContentGuard requires Advanced Custom Fields 6.0+ (Free or Pro). The plugin will not boot field integrations without it.

Does ContentGuard require ACF Pro?

Not for every feature. Free ACF covers supported scalar fields and Groups. Repeater, Flexible Content, and Clone require ACF Pro.

Editors and fields

Does ContentGuard support WordPress Core fields?

Yes: Title, Content, Excerpt, Slug, Featured Image, and Author.

Does it support Gutenberg?

Yes. ContentGuard validates supported Core and ACF fields in the block editor on the supported save paths. Core blocking can surface through WordPress REST responses with ContentGuard feedback in the editor.

Does it support Classic Editor?

Yes. Blocking validation runs before publication/save on supported paths, and issues are surfaced to the editor.

Why isn’t a field appearing in the Rule Builder?

Common causes:

• The field type is outside V1 support (for example many relationship-style or media types)
• You selected a post type that does not expose that ACF field group
• Repeater / Flexible Content / Clone need ACF Pro
• Nested structures deeper than two Repeater levels are not supported

See the Features page for the supported field matrix.

Rules and matching

What is the difference between Blocking and Warning?

Blocking prevents publish and updates to published/private content on supported paths until the issue is resolved. Warning surfaces the issue but allows the save. See Blocking vs Warning.

What happens to drafts?

In V1, drafts, autosaves, and revisions are not blocked. Editors can save work in progress even when Blocking rules would fail on publish.

Can I create a rule with only a WHEN condition?

Yes. When the condition matches, the rule itself becomes the finding. This is useful for prohibited terminology and similar governance checks.

What does contains mean?

contains / does not contain are WHEN-only operators. They perform case-insensitive literal substring matching on string-like fields. They are not THEN validators.

Is contains case-sensitive?

No. Matching is case-insensitive.

Does contains support regex or wildcards?

No. There is no regex, wildcard, fuzzy, or AI matching. Empty search values are invalid.

What happens when an applicable field is empty?

It depends on the operator or validator. For example, contains does not match empty field values. empty / not empty and Required are the operators/validators intended for emptiness checks. Prefer the Rule preview sentence to confirm behavior before saving.

Repeaters and structures

Does ContentGuard support Repeater fields?

Yes, with ACF Pro. ContentGuard evaluates repeated field context rather than treating every value as one flat string.

How deep can nested Repeaters go?

Up to two Repeater levels (Repeater → Repeater → scalar). Deeper nesting is outside V1.

How do WHEN and THEN behave on repeated fields?

WHEN conditions on Repeater/Flexible Content use any-row semantics. THEN validations apply to every matching row/instance.

Audit

What does Audit evaluate?

Existing published and private content against your active rules.

Does Audit modify content?

No. Audit only reports findings.

Do warnings appear in Audit?

Yes. Audit summarizes content that passed, needs attention (blocking), or needs review (warnings), with field and rule context. Repeated findings retain row context where applicable.

Uninstall

What happens when I delete the plugin?

Uninstalling removes ContentGuard rules, audit data, and the management capability. Deactivation alone keeps that data.