Connecting WordPress, and every way it can fail

WordPress connects once. You approve us in your own WordPress admin, WordPress hands us an application password, and from then on every finished page is one button. Nothing to install.

What it needs

• WordPress 5.6 or newer, on HTTPS. Older installs, or sites without HTTPS, don't offer application passwords.
• An admin seat in the tracker to connect or disconnect. Editors can publish once it's connected.
• A WordPress administrator, ideally. Whoever approves the connection is who we post as. An editor can publish posts, but WordPress strips the page's schema for anyone who isn't an administrator, and only an administrator can put a page under a section of your site.

Connecting

1. On the Publishing page, press Connect WordPress.
2. Your own WordPress admin opens on an approval screen for AI Visibility Tracker. Sign in if it asks, then approve.
3. You come back to the tracker and a notice says the site is connected.

The password is stored encrypted and never shown. It stays listed in your WordPress profile under Application Passwords, named AI Visibility Tracker.

When connecting fails

The notice tells you which of these happened.

• Something is blocking its REST API. It is WordPress, but a security plugin (Wordfence, iThemes, Solid Security) has "disable REST API" switched on, or your host's firewall is refusing us. Allow /wp-json/ for logged-in users, then connect again.
• Application passwords are turned off. The site is older than 5.6, isn't on HTTPS, or a plugin has disabled application passwords. Fix whichever it is, then connect again.
• It isn't running WordPress. We reached the site but found no WordPress. If it really is WordPress, a firewall may be hiding it from us; see When your firewall blocks us.
• We couldn't reach it. The site didn't load at all. Try again in a moment.
• WordPress gave us a password it then rejected. Connect again. If it keeps happening, a security plugin is likely refusing the login that follows.
• You cancelled the connection. Nothing was saved.

Publishing

On the Publish tab, choose Live now or Save as a WordPress draft instead. A draft lands in your WordPress admin for you to finish there. Only a live page counts on the question board; a draft made live later in WordPress is found by our daily check.

Under Category, tick the categories the post goes in. Nothing ticked, and WordPress files it under your site's default category. New categories are made in WordPress. A page under a section has no categories.

Images go into your Media Library. If one won't upload, the page still goes up with that image shown from our servers, and the Publish tab says how many; upload it in WordPress and swap it in if you'd rather host it yourself. The meta description goes into Yoast if you use it; if your SEO plugin doesn't take it, the Publish tab says so and gives you the text to paste.

Adding changes to a live page

When Improve writes changes for a page that's already live, Add to my page puts them into that page in one click, if it was built in the normal WordPress editor. WordPress keeps the old version, so you can undo it from the page's revisions. A change we can't place exactly is left for you to copy in, and a page built with a page builder gets the copy route instead.

Putting a page under a section

Start the page's address with that section's folder in the Address field, for example sacramento-charter-bus/25-passenger-minibus-cost. We find the page at /sacramento-charter-bus/ and publish the new one as its child. If there is no published page at that folder, publishing stops and says so rather than putting the page somewhere else. Without a folder, the page goes up as a regular post.

If your site sets addresses with the Custom Permalinks plugin, WordPress doesn't let us fill in that plugin's address field, so a page under a folder is saved as a WordPress draft instead: set the address in its Custom Permalinks box and publish it from WordPress. To make it one click, have whoever manages the site add this to the theme's functions.php or a code snippets plugin:

add_action('init', function () {
  register_post_meta('', 'custom_permalink', [
    'show_in_rest'  => true,
    'single'        => true,
    'type'          => 'string',
    'auth_callback' => function () { return current_user_can('edit_posts'); },
  ]);
});

When publishing fails

• WordPress refused our connection. The application password was revoked, or a security plugin or firewall now blocks us. The Publishing page shows Reconnect WordPress; reconnecting fixes it, once anything blocking us is allowed.
• The account isn't allowed to publish this. The WordPress user we connected as can't do it (a Contributor can't publish live). Reconnect with an administrator or editor account, or save it as a WordPress draft. The connection itself is fine.
• The schema didn't go with it. The WordPress user we connected as isn't an administrator, so WordPress stripped it. The page is live; copy the schema from Copy it in yourself into your SEO plugin, or reconnect as an administrator.
• We held back the schema block. It still had an unfilled placeholder, or wasn't valid. The page went up without it.
• Not allowed to create pages in that section. Reconnect with an administrator account, or publish without the folder.
• No published page at that folder. Take the folder out of the address, or publish the parent page first.
• Couldn't reach your WordPress site. Try again in a moment.

Disconnecting

On the Publishing page, under WordPress is connected, press Disconnect. That deletes our copy of the password. The password itself lives in your WordPress profile: to revoke it, open Users, then Profile, then Application Passwords, and revoke AI Visibility Tracker.

A site publishes through one connection, so connecting Wix, Webflow, GitHub or your own server replaces WordPress, and the reverse.