Publish to WordPress

Connect your WordPress site with the free ProjectHQ plugin so articles publish as normal posts, with images in your media library and meta in your SEO plugin.

Connect your WordPress site and every article you publish in ProjectHQ arrives as a normal WordPress post — with its images in your media library, the cover as the featured image, and the meta description and focus keyword in your SEO plugin. It takes a free plugin and one key; there are no passwords to create.

Before you start

  • You need to be able to install plugins on the WordPress site (an administrator account).
  • The plugin works with WordPress 5.6 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
  • Supported SEO plugins: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress and All in One SEO. Without an SEO plugin, the ProjectHQ plugin adds the meta description tag itself.

Step 1: install the plugin

  1. In ProjectHQ, open your blog's Settings → Publishing and choose WordPress (see Publish to your website for where this lives).
  2. Under Install the plugin, click Download the plugin to get the zip.
  3. In your WordPress admin, open Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin, pick the zip, then click Install Now and Activate.
  4. Open Settings → ProjectHQ in WordPress and copy the connection key.
  5. Back in ProjectHQ, click Next.
The WordPress connect form, step 1 Install the plugin: what the plugin does, three steps, the Download the plugin button and Next

Step 2: connect your site

  1. Check the site address. ProjectHQ fills in your project's domain; change it if your blog lives elsewhere. Use your site's public address, not the /wp-admin address.
  2. Paste the connection key.
  3. Click Connect & verify.
Step 2 Connect your site: the site address field with https://www.example.com, the connection key field and the Connect & verify button

ProjectHQ checks that it can reach the plugin and that the key matches. When it works, the top of the section shows your site's name and Connected, with your WordPress version, the SEO plugin it found and the plugin version:

A connected WordPress site: Example Blog, Connected, WordPress 6.8, Yoast SEO, Plugin 1.0.0, with Test connection, Update credentials and Disconnect

The key is stored encrypted. Every request to your site is signed with it — the key itself never travels.

Choose who posts are published as

In WordPress, Settings → ProjectHQ has a Publishing section where you choose Publish as (the author) and the Category new articles are filed in. Only users who can publish posts are listed. Changing the category later doesn't move articles that are already published.

What gets published

  • Each article becomes a normal post, published straight away when you click Publish in ProjectHQ (or on its scheduled date).
  • Images are uploaded to your media library, named after the article; the cover becomes the featured image. Diagrams are converted to an image format WordPress accepts.
  • SEO fields: the meta description and focus keyword are written into your SEO plugin's fields.
  • Updates: after you edit a live article in ProjectHQ, click Push update to WordPress in the editor. The same post is updated — its address, date, author and categories stay as they are.
  • Unpublishing in ProjectHQ turns the post back into a draft in WordPress. The plugin never deletes posts.
  • Your own posts are safe: ProjectHQ can only change posts it published itself.

If something goes wrong

The error from your site is shown under the form, or in the article's publishing log (editor → SEO tab → Publishing). The common ones:

Message says What to do
The key does not match A new key was generated in WordPress. Copy it again from Settings → ProjectHQ, click Update credentials in ProjectHQ and paste it.
The site's clock is more than five minutes off Requests are only accepted within five minutes of being sent. Ask your host to sync the server time.
The plugin has no key yet Deactivate and activate the plugin, then copy the key from Settings → ProjectHQ.
A security plugin is probably blocking the REST API Allow the projecthq/v1 routes in your security plugin.

Use Test connection in ProjectHQ to check again after a fix. If you generate a new key in WordPress (Generate a new key), the old one stops working until you paste the new one into ProjectHQ.

Tip: If you deactivate or delete the plugin, ProjectHQ can no longer publish to your site, but everything it already published stays.

Publish to WordPress — ProjectHQ Docs