WordPress MCP: Connect Claude to Your Site in 5 Minutes

Write in Claude, copy, paste into the editor, redo the subheadings, put the links back, fill in the meta description: that is the daily routine of many people who publish with AI. WordPress MCP removes that copy and paste. Claude reads your posts, pages and menus directly on the site and, if you allow it, creates and edits them itself.

I recorded the full setup on video, on a client's site, in just over three minutes (the video is in French). This article walks through each step with what does not fit in a short video: rebuilding the URL without mistakes, the most common causes of failure and the security settings you should not forget.

▶ WordPress MCP × Claude: the full setup in 3 min 22 s (in French)

Video chapters (in French): 0:07 installing MCP Adapter · 0:40 the application password · 0:58 the connector in Claude · 1:14 the URL, part by part · 2:08 the right to write · 2:33 the test.

How to connect WordPress to Claude: the short answer

1. Check that the site runs WordPress 6.9 or later, on HTTPS, and that you have an administrator account.
2. Download mcp-adapter.zip from the latest release of the WordPress/mcp-adapter GitHub repository, then install it: Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin.
3. In Users > Profile, create an application password named "Claude" and copy it.
4. In Claude, open Connectors, add a custom connector and paste the connector URL filled in with your three values.
5. Install the Enable Abilities for MCP plugin to give Claude the right to read and write.
6. Restart Claude, turn the connector on in a conversation and ask it whether it can see your site.

Each step is detailed below, with a generator that builds the connector URL for you. If something gets stuck, the troubleshooting section covers the eight causes I run into most often.

WordPress MCP, in practice

MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is a standard plug between an AI model and a piece of software: the software exposes what it can do, the model plugs into it and calls those functions itself. If the concept is new to you, I explain in detail what an MCP server is and what it is for.

On the WordPress side, the plug is built in two parts. Since version 6.9, released at the end of 2025, WordPress core ships with the Abilities API: a registry where the site and its plugins declare what they can do (list posts, create a page, add a menu item), with the permissions required for each action. The MCP Adapter plugin, maintained by the WordPress AI team, translates that registry into MCP tools and publishes them at an address on the site's REST API: /wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server.

Claude does not see dozens of tools at once. The default server gives it three: one to discover the available abilities (mcp-adapter-discover-abilities), one to read the instructions for one of them (mcp-adapter-get-ability-info), and one to run it (mcp-adapter-execute-ability). So Claude always starts by taking inventory, then acts. That is exactly what you will see scroll by during the first test.

What you need before you start

• WordPress 6.9 or later. The Abilities API has been in core since that version and the adapter does not work without it. Check in Dashboard > Updates.
• An administrator account. With an editor, author or contributor account, the connection does not work. This is the first sticking point.
• A live site, on HTTPS. For two reasons. WordPress disables application passwords on a site without HTTPS. And Claude's custom connector connects from Anthropic's servers: a WordPress installed on your computer, behind a VPN or behind a firewall that filters IP addresses cannot be reached.
• A Claude account. The free plan is limited to one custom connector, which is enough for one site. I detail what the free version allows in Is Claude AI free?. The web, the desktop app and Cowork all accept custom connectors.

Step 1: install the MCP Adapter plugin

You download the plugin from GitHub, in the official WordPress repository.

1. Open github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter and click Releases, in the right-hand column.
2. Open the latest version (v0.7.0 at the time of writing), scroll down to Assets and download mcp-adapter.zip. Not the "Source code" archives: the file named mcp-adapter.zip is the one that contains the ready-to-install plugin.
3. In WordPress: Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin, choose the file, Install Now, then Activate.

If you have command-line access to the server, WP-CLI does the same thing in one line:

wp plugin install https://github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter/releases/latest/download/mcp-adapter.zip --activate

Nothing to configure afterwards: once activated, the plugin creates the default MCP server on its own, the one Claude will call.

Step 2: create an application password

This is the step where you need to pay attention. Application passwords have existed in WordPress since version 5.6 and are designed for exactly this: giving an external tool access to the site's API without handing over your real password, and being able to take that access away at any time without changing anything else.

1. Go to Users > Profile (or hover over your name at the top right, then Edit Profile).
2. Scroll all the way down the page to the Application Passwords section.
3. Give it a name that says what it is for, "Claude" for example, then click Add New Application Password.
4. Copy the code displayed and keep it handy for the duration of the setup.

The code comes as six blocks of four characters separated by spaces, such as abcd EFGH 1234 ijkl MNOP 5678. The spaces are only there for readability: you will need to remove them in the URL.

While you are on this page, scroll back to the top and note your username: it is the grayed-out field you cannot change. It is not necessarily your email address, nor the name displayed publicly on the site.

The "Application Passwords" section does not appear? The site is not on HTTPS, or a security plugin has disabled the feature. The fixes are in the troubleshooting section.

Step 3: add the custom connector in Claude

1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors. Depending on your version, the menu may also be called Customize > Connectors.
2. Click + or Add, then Add custom connector.
3. Give it a clear name. In the video, I used the site name followed by "MCP": handy as soon as you connect several sites.
4. In the URL field, paste the template below, replace the three parts (details right after), then click Continue.
5. On the authentication screen, choose no sign-in ("No sign in"): the credentials are already in the URL. Click Add.
6. The connector shows as connecting, then as connected. In the desktop app, quit Claude completely and reopen it.

The WordPress MCP connector URL, piece by piece

Here is the template to paste into the URL field:

https://username:APP_PASSWORD@domain/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server

It looks technical, but it is just a path. What comes before the @ tells WordPress who is connecting, what comes after tells it where the MCP server lives.

With the username jane, the password abcd EFGH 1234 ijkl MNOP 5678 and the site https://www.mysite.com/, you get:

https://jane:abcdEFGH1234ijklMNOP5678@www.mysite.com/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server

Two special cases. If WordPress is installed in a subfolder (mysite.com/blog), keep the subfolder before /wp-json. And if your username contains a space or an @, those characters must be encoded (%20 and %40), otherwise the URL is misread. The generator below takes care of it.

Step 4: give Claude the right to write

At this point, Claude can see the site, but it can hardly do anything there. WordPress keeps its abilities private by default: only those a plugin declares public go through the MCP server, and core declares almost none. The Enable Abilities for MCP plugin fills that gap.

1. Plugins > Add New Plugin, search for Enable Abilities for MCP.
2. Install the first one, by Fabio Montenegro, then activate it.
3. Open Settings > WP Abilities to see and choose what Claude is allowed to do.

The plugin declares more than a hundred abilities, grouped into families: reading, writing, menus, utilities, and modules for common plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress, WooCommerce, Elementor, among others). Each one can be checked or unchecked. It also respects WordPress permissions: a write ability checks that the connected account is actually allowed to publish or edit the content in question.

Once the plugin is activated and configured, quit and relaunch Claude so it reloads the list of tools.

The test: can Claude see your site?

Open a new conversation. First check that the connector is active: the + button at the bottom left of the input box, then Connectors, and your site's toggle should be on. Then simply ask:

Tell me whether you have access to the WordPress site [site name] through MCP, and list what you can do on it.

Claude loads the connector, calls the discovery tool and gives you the inventory: reading, writing, pages, menus, plugins. Depending on your configuration, it may ask you to finish connecting or to allow the tool: approve. If the list comes back empty, it is almost always step 4 or a forgotten restart.

What Claude can do once connected

With Enable Abilities for MCP, the abilities fall into six families. What is available depends on what you have checked and on the plugins installed on the site.

The plugin even has a module dedicated to the llms.txt file, the file that introduces your site to answer engines.

Five requests that work from day one

• The inventory: "List the last 20 published posts with their SEO title and meta description, and flag the ones that are missing or longer than 155 characters."
• The draft: "Create a draft from the text below, in the Guides category, with one H2 per section. Do not publish anything."
• Internal linking: "Find the posts about [topic] and suggest three internal links to add to each one, without changing anything."
• The cleanup: "List the drafts that have not been edited in more than six months."
• The menu: "Add the Contact page at the end of the main menu."

The principle is the same as for any request to a model: the wording is not what matters, it is the context you provide. Say which content, which action, and what must stay untouched. "Without changing anything" and "as a draft" are the two most useful phrases in this list.

Not working? The 8 most common causes

The 401 case when the URL is correct. On many Apache hosts, the header that carries the username and password is stripped before it reaches WordPress. Since version 5.6, WordPress itself adds the line that fixes this in the .htaccess file, but older sites often do not have it. Check that the WordPress block in your file contains:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

The easiest way to make it appear: Settings > Permalinks, then Save Changes without changing anything. WordPress then rewrites its block. If you edit the file by hand, make a copy first: a syntax error takes the whole site offline. On an Nginx server, passing the header through is up to your host.

To find out whether the problem comes from WordPress or from Claude, a command-line test settles it in ten seconds:

curl -u "username:applicationpassword" https://www.mysite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/me

If the response contains your profile, authentication works and the problem is in the connector URL. If it returns a 401 error, the problem is on the site or hosting side.

Security: what this password really opens

The application password gives whoever holds it your administrator account's permissions on the site's API. And the connector URL contains it in plain text. So treat it like a password: not in a message, not in a ticket, not in a screenshot.

• A dedicated account. Create an administrator user reserved for Claude, with its own application password. Everything Claude does shows up under that name in the revision history, and cutting off access just means deleting that account, without touching yours.
• Revoke. In Users > Profile > Application Passwords, each password shows its last-used date and a Revoke button. The connector is no longer in use? Revoke it.
• Least privilege. In WP Abilities, check only the abilities you need. A disabled ability cannot be misused.
• Content is data, not orders. Claude reads what is on your site, including comments left by anyone. A booby-trapped text can try to hijack the model: that is how prompt injection works. Hence manual approval for write tools.
• A backup first. Obvious, but worth writing down: a recent backup before the first writing session, and a test on a copy of the site if you have one.

For a team, there is a variant without a password in the URL. According to its documentation, Enable Abilities for MCP now includes an OAuth server designed for claude.ai connectors: each person signs in with their own WordPress account and their own role. The method in the video is still the fastest when you manage the site alone; as soon as several people use it, this variant is the first one I look at.

What about Claude Code, or a local WordPress?

The custom connector goes through Anthropic's servers, hence the need for a live site. For a WordPress installed on your machine, or to work from Claude Code, the MCP Adapter provides two other routes, documented on the WordPress developer blog.

The HTTP proxy. The @automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote package runs with Node.js on your computer and takes the server address, the username and the application password. In Claude Code, a single command does it:

claude mcp add --transport stdio \
  --env WP_API_URL=https://www.mysite.com/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server \
  --env WP_API_USERNAME=username \
  --env WP_API_PASSWORD=applicationpassword \
  wordpress -- npx -y @automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote@latest

The same configuration can be declared in Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json file, with the same three variables.

WP-CLI, directly. If the site runs on your machine with WP-CLI installed, Claude can launch the server itself, without going through the network: the command is wp mcp-adapter serve --server=mcp-adapter-default-server --user=admin, with --path pointing to the site's folder.

What it changes in my work

I mainly use it for background tasks that do not deserve half a day: reviewing the meta descriptions of an entire blog, adding the internal links to a new post, preparing drafts already in the right format. MCP saves you the time spent clicking, not the time spent thinking: deciding what to publish, for whom and why is still your job.

It is the same connection I showed with the Screaming Frog MCP server for crawls, applied this time to the CMS. And if you want to go further than the connector, with automations that hold up in production on your own tools, that is what AI automation is all about.

Written by

Anthony Courtin

SEO, GEO & AI automation consultant

I help small businesses and independent professionals with their visibility (Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity) and with real-world use of AI at work. I train teams in-house and help them rethink their processes. Everything I write here, I use with clients.

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