RedPen for Craft CMS
RedPen Documentation
RedPen is editorial QA for Craft CMS 5. It checks every entry against your house style guide — banned terms, brand capitalisation, headings, alt text, link text, typography, inclusive language and readability — and can add real grammar review from a self-hosted LanguageTool server or an LLM you bring your own key for.
It is not a spellchecker. Your browser already does that, for free, in every field. RedPen checks the things a browser cannot: the rules your organisation actually wrote down.
Start here
Installation
Composer, the plugin install, and what to do first.
Using the review panel
Findings, severities, the health score and dismissals.
Rule reference
All twelve rules, their ids, defaults and options.
Style profiles
Named house styles in project config, scoped per section and site.
Save-time validation
Warning on save, blocking on error, and what is exempt.
LanguageTool & AI
The two optional network backends, and why neither is a default.
Audits & reporting
Site-wide runs, report screens and the dashboard widget.
Console & CI
redpen/check, its options, and its exit codes.
Settings
Every setting, its default, and the config file.
Permissions
Who can review, audit and manage profiles.
Extending RedPen
Custom rules, field extractors and validation backends.
Troubleshooting
Common problems and what causes them.
Requirements
- Craft CMS 5.3.0 or later
- PHP 8.2 or later
- The
dom,jsonandmbstringextensions — all present in any working Craft install
Nothing else. No system binaries, no external service, no API key.
Editions
RedPen ships in two editions. Lite is free and includes the entire rule library. Pro is $99 one-time plus $79/year for updates, and adds the features a team needs once more than one person is writing.
| Lite | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Full rule library | Yes | Yes |
| Review panel on entry edit | Yes | Yes |
| One default style profile | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple profiles, per-section assignment | — | Yes |
| Save-time validation | — | Yes |
| Site-wide audits, reports, dashboard widget | — | Yes |
| LanguageTool and AI backends | — | Yes |
| Console command for CI | — | Yes |
| Editorial sign-off | — | Yes |