Review & Save
Location: Step 14 — Review & Save
This is the final stage of the settings flow. The cumulative effect of every earlier step is rendered as a live robots.txt preview, and nothing is published until the operator validates it here.
What this step controls
Inside this step:
- the plugin generates the current
robots.txtpreview; - the preview can be refreshed to reflect any last-minute change made in an earlier step;
- the output can be copied for archive, diffing, or manual review;
- the operator validates the output before publication.
The actual save is still handled by the global sticky action bar that follows the wizard. The preview is the source of truth for what will go live.
How to decide
Use the preview to confirm:
- the search-engine posture (Step 1) matches the intended audience;
- the AI governance signals (Step 2) match the documented stance in the AI Usage Policy;
- the SEO tool and bad bots blocks (Steps 3 and 4) make sense for the site's traffic profile;
- the archive posture (Step 5) reflects the preservation decision;
- the core WordPress paths (Step 6) and the e-commerce or spam cleanup (Steps 7 and 8) match the actual stack;
- the resources, social, ads, and
llms.txtsections look right at the category level.
A diff against the previous version (kept by the operator or via Git) is the cleanest way to verify what changed.
What this step does not do
This step does not:
- enforce the policy at the runtime layer — crawler obedience still depends on each crawler;
- detect mistakes that are syntactically valid but operationally wrong (for example, an unintentional
Disallow: /survives a syntax check); - replace a follow-up audit after publication. A live audit with the robots.txt presence and validity check is recommended after any non-trivial change.
This is one of the strongest product differences in Better Robots.txt: beginners get reassurance, and advanced operators get a real verification point before going live.
Plan tier
The preview and the Review & Save step are available on every tier.