What Is a WordPress MCP Server?

So far in this series, Claude has been reading data: GA4, Search Console, crawl data, heatmaps, tags and listings. It can tell you which title tags to rewrite, which pages need internal links and which images are missing alt text. But you still have to log in to WordPress and make every change yourself.

A WordPress MCP server closes that gap. It lets Claude work with your WordPress site directly: listing and reading posts, creating drafts, updating content, managing categories and media, and, depending on your plugins, updating SEO titles and meta descriptions, redirects and caches. Claude finds the problem with your other connectors, then fixes it in WordPress in the same conversation.

In this guide we use the free Easy MCP AI plugin, which turns your WordPress site into an MCP server. As with every connector in this series, MCP is an open standard, so the same server also works with other MCP-compatible AI tools.

What You Need Before You Start

• A WordPress site and an administrator login.
• The Claude desktop app.
• Node.js (the LTS version), which includes npm. Check it’s installed by running node -v and npm -v in a terminal.

How to Set Up WordPress MCP for Claude

Step 1: Install the Easy MCP AI plugin

Log in to your WordPress admin and go to Plugins → Add New Plugin. Search for “Easy MCP AI”, then install and activate it.

Once activated, open Easy MCP AI in the left-hand menu and go to the Dashboard. You’ll see your site’s MCP server URL, which looks like this:

https://www.yoursite.com/wp-json/easy-mcp-ai/v1/mcp

Copy it. You’ll need it in Step 5.

Step 2: Create an API token

Go to Easy MCP AI → API Tokens, create a new token and copy it. Store it somewhere safe, such as a password manager: anyone with this token can act on your site through the plugin. Tokens aren’t tied to one computer, so you can reuse the same token if you set Claude up on another machine.

Step 3: Install mcp-remote

The plugin runs a remote MCP server at a URL. The Claude desktop app connects to it through a small bridge called mcp-remote. Install it globally with npm:

npm install -g mcp-remote

Why install it globally rather than using npx? On Windows, npx usually lives in C:\Program Files\nodejs\. The space in that path can stop Claude from launching it, with an error like “C:\Program” is not recognized as a command. A global install puts mcp-remote in your user’s npm folder, which has no spaces.

Step 4: Refresh your WordPress permalinks

If you’ve changed your permalink structure recently, the plugin’s endpoint can return a 404 until WordPress rebuilds its routing rules. Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes without changing anything. It’s a good habit to do this anyway before connecting.

Step 5: Add your site to the Claude config

Quit the Claude desktop app completely. Open the config file (Settings → Developer → Edit Config) and add an entry inside mcpServers, alongside any servers from earlier parts of this series. Replace the URL and token with your own. You can name the entry anything; using the site name helps if you connect several sites.

"your-site-name": {
  "command": "mcp-remote",
  "args": [
    "https://www.yoursite.com/wp-json/easy-mcp-ai/v1/mcp",
    "--header",
    "Authorization:Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE"
  ]
}

Note there’s no space between Authorization: and Bearer. That’s intentional. Remember to add a comma between this entry and the server before it.

Step 6: Clear the mcp-remote cache if needed

If you’ve used mcp-remote before with a different URL, it may reuse stale connection details. Delete the .mcp-auth folder in your user folder if it exists: C:\Users\YourName\.mcp-auth on Windows, or ~/.mcp-auth on Mac.

Step 7: Relaunch Claude and test

Save the config, reopen Claude and ask: “List my five most recent WordPress posts with their status and publish dates.” If you see your posts, you’re connected.

Connecting more than one WordPress site

Install the plugin on each site, create a token for each, and add one entry per site to the config with a different name, for example "client-a-site" and "client-b-site". Then tell Claude which site to work on at the start of each conversation.

What Claude Can Do with WordPress MCP

The plugin gives Claude a large set of WordPress tools. Which ones are available depends on the plugin version, your user’s permissions and the integrations you switch on in the plugin settings. Typical uses for SEO and CRO:

Draft and schedule content

“Draft a blog post on [topic] using the content brief below. Use H2 and H3 headings, add it to the [category] category, and save it as a draft. Don’t publish it.”

Update SEO titles and meta descriptions

If your site uses an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math, Claude can usually update titles, meta descriptions and focus keywords too:

“For each post in the [category] category, check the SEO title and meta description. List any title over 60 characters or meta description over 155 characters, suggest a rewrite for each, and wait for my approval before changing anything.”

Fix links, images and redirects

• “Find internal links in my posts that still use old URLs and replace them with the current permalinks.”
• “List every image in the media library with no alt text, and suggest alt text for each based on the image and the post it’s used in.”
• “Create 301 redirects for these old URLs to their new pages.” (This needs a redirect plugin, such as Redirection, that the MCP plugin can work with.)

Keep a series up to date

Claude can update navigation, cross-references and “coming soon” notes across a whole blog series, and a scheduled task can do it every week as new posts go live. If your site uses a caching plugin, ask Claude to clear the cache for the posts it edits so visitors see the changes straight away.

WordPress MCP Safeguards

Giving an AI write access to a live website needs care. These habits keep it safe:

• Use drafts. Ask Claude to save changes as drafts, and publish them yourself after checking. Some plugins have a setting to force everything Claude creates into draft.
• Limit the tools. Turn off tools you don’t need in the plugin settings, especially delete tools, and use a WordPress user with only the role the work needs.
• Test on staging first. Try new workflows on a staging site before using them on a live one.
• Ask for a summary of every change. Have Claude list exactly what it changed, then check the pages in a preview or on the live site.
• Keep revisions on. WordPress revisions let you roll back a post if an edit goes wrong.
• Protect the token. Never paste it into a chat or share your config file. If it leaks, revoke it in the plugin and create a new one.

Troubleshooting WordPress MCP

• 404 error when connecting: refresh your permalinks (Settings → Permalinks → Save Changes).
• “C:\Program” is not recognized as a command: you’re probably using npx in the config. Install mcp-remote globally and use "command": "mcp-remote" instead.
• The server doesn’t appear in Claude: check the config is valid JSON (commas and brackets), then fully quit and reopen Claude. On Windows, quit from the system tray.
• Authorisation errors: check the token is correct, hasn’t been revoked, and that there’s no space after Authorization:.
• Connected to the wrong site, or old details: delete the .mcp-auth folder and restart Claude.
• Requests time out on large edits: ask Claude to make one change at a time per post, and to check whether a timed-out change was saved before retrying.
• Changes don’t show on the site: clear your page cache, or check in a private browser window.

Next up: Part 10 — Powerful SEO Prompts Using Your Claude MCP Stack, now with prompts that fix what they find in WordPress.