Publish articles straight to WordPress.
Our plugin creates a post for each article, uploads the images to your media library and fills in the SEO title and meta description in your SEO plugin. When you change the article later, it updates that same post.
Updated
What you need
- WordPress 6.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.
- A site served over HTTPS and reachable from the internet. Citapult sends the articles to its REST API, so no security plugin or firewall may block it.
- An account with the Administrator role, to install and connect the plugin.
Set it up
1. Add the integration
In Citapult, open Settings → Integrations, pick WordPress under “Type” and click “Add”. Under “Setup” on the new integration you find the plugin download and your key.
2. Install the plugin
In WordPress, upload the ZIP file under Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin, click “Install Now” and then “Activate Plugin”.
3. Connect the site
In WordPress, open Settings → Citapult, paste the key and click “Connect”. Citapult calls your site once to check that it can reach it. Once that works, the integration in Citapult shows your site's address.
4. Set up new posts
On the same page, pick the user and category new posts appear under, and whether the plugin publishes them right away or saves them as drafts. If you entered someone under “Author” in Citapult, pick a user with the same name, so your theme's byline matches the structured data. If the plugin saves drafts, the article still counts as published in Citapult once WordPress has taken it. It only goes live when you publish it in WordPress.
5. Publish an article
Open a finished article and click “Publish”. Below the button you see when each integration got it, or the error. The article counts as published once every integration has taken it.
6. Optional: publish automatically
Turn on “Publish automatically” under Integrations. Articles marked “Needs review” then go out to all integrations on their scheduled day without a click. You set the time in the calendar under “Schedule”.
What lands where in WordPress
The plugin detects Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress and All in One SEO and fills in the SEO title, meta description and focus keyword there. Without an SEO plugin, it sets the post page's title, meta description and social media tags itself.
| Citapult | WordPress |
|---|---|
| Title | Post title |
| Slug | Post slug, the last part of its URL |
| Article text | Post content, without the H1, since your theme shows the title itself |
| Featured image | Featured image |
| Images in the text | Media library, embedded with every size WordPress makes of them. Images you added yourself from another address stay linked there. |
| Meta title | SEO title in your SEO plugin |
| Meta description | Meta description in your SEO plugin, and the excerpt |
| Keyword | Focus keyword in your SEO plugin |
| JSON-LD | The post page's head, with the post's URL and its featured image. It replaces your SEO plugin's Article entry, so search engines find the article described only once. |
| Language | The post's language, if you use Polylang or WPML |
| YouTube videos | The video URL in a paragraph of its own, which WordPress embeds as a video |
When you change an article
Edit a published article and its status goes back to “Needs review”. “Update” sends the new version to the same post. Its title, text, featured image and SEO fields then come from Citapult, and whatever you changed there in WordPress is gone. A notice says so when you edit the post in WordPress.
- Status, author and category you changed in WordPress stay. So an update doesn't publish a draft.
- If you deleted the post, the plugin creates it again. If it's in the trash, the send stops with an error until you restore it or delete it for good.
- Images already in the media library aren't downloaded again.
- If the article has no featured image, the one set in WordPress stays.
Plugin updates
WordPress shows new versions under Plugins, like for any other plugin. You can turn on automatic updates there too.
Disconnecting, removing, deleting
The posts stay either way, and each one remembers which article it belongs to.
- If you disconnect in WordPress under Settings → Citapult, no more articles arrive until you connect again.
- If you remove the integration in Citapult, its key stops working. If you connect the site again later with a new integration, the plugin updates the existing posts instead of creating them twice.
- If you delete the plugin, the post pages lose their JSON-LD and, without an SEO plugin, their SEO title, meta description and social media tags.
Errors and questions
“Citapult doesn't know this key.”
Copy the key from Citapult again, ideally with the button next to it under Settings → Integrations → Setup. If you removed the integration there, add a new one and use its key.
“Citapult only connects sites served over HTTPS at a public address.”
Your site runs without HTTPS or at an address that only works inside your network, such as localhost or a local IP address. Set up an SSL certificate with your host and change the address in WordPress under Settings → General to https://.
“Citapult couldn't reach this site at …”
When you connect, Citapult calls your site from outside. That fails if it only runs on a local network or without HTTPS, sits behind password protection, or a security plugin like Wordfence or your host's firewall blocks the REST API. Allow requests to /wp-json/citapult/ there.
“This site couldn't reach Citapult”
Your host doesn't allow outgoing connections. Ask them to allow connections to citapult.com.
“This key is already connected to …”
A key belongs to exactly one WordPress site. As long as the previous site still answers, no other site can connect with it, so a staging copy can't accidentally take over your live site. For another site, add another integration in Citapult. If your site moved, disconnect the old one under Settings → Citapult. If the old address no longer answers at all, the new one connects without that step.
“The WordPress plugin isn't connected yet”
The integration has no site yet. Install the plugin and connect it with the key from “Setup”, as described above.
“The plugin rejected the request signature …”
The plugin holds a different key than Citapult, usually after you removed and re-added the integration. Disconnect the plugin under Settings → Citapult and connect it with the current key.
“The site's clock is off …”
Every request from Citapult carries a time, and the plugin rejects requests more than five minutes off. Your server's clock is wrong; ask your host to fix it.
“WordPress already has a post with the slug …”
WordPress already has a post with this slug that didn't come from Citapult. Delete the old post in WordPress or change its slug there. As long as no integration has the article, you can change its slug in Citapult instead.
“Post … is in the WordPress trash”
The post for this article is in the trash. Restore it and the plugin updates it. If you delete it for good, the plugin creates a new one on the next send.
“Image …: …”
WordPress couldn't download or store an image. After the colon is the reason WordPress gives, often a full disk or an upload folder without write permission.
“Not finished: still sending or cut off …”
The send is still running or was cut off, usually with many large images. Wait a few minutes and reload the page. If the message is still there, click “Publish” or “Update” again: the plugin carries on with the existing post and doesn't download images already in the media library again.