MCP Connect

Connect Claude and other AI apps to WordPress through the official MCP Adapter, with guided setup and full control over what they can do.

By Aron & Sharon.

• Guided setup under Tools → MCP Connect: permissions, a dedicated AI login, and copy-ready instructions for Claude (web, desktop & mobile), Claude Desktop, Claude Code, WP-CLI and other MCP apps, with a server self-test and live connection status.
• 35 abilities (posts, pages, media, terms, comments, menus, site settings, plugins, block reference), each with its own on/off switch.
• Multiple connections (MCP addresses), each with its own abilities, access rules and AI instructions.
• Multiple AI logins, a pause switch, activity log, and every MCP Adapter setting (logging, sessions, WP-CLI, tool names).

Requires WordPress 6.9+, PHP 7.4+ and the MCP Adapter plugin.

Installing

Download mcp-connect.zip from the latest release and upload it under Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin. Don't use GitHub's "Source code" zip for a first install; its folder name is different.

Updates

The plugin updates itself from this repository's GitHub releases. WordPress checks twice a day, shows new versions under Dashboard → Updates, and can install them automatically (Tools → MCP Connect → Settings → Updates, or the "Enable auto-updates" link on the Plugins screen).

How it works: the plugin header's Update URI points at GitHub, so WordPress asks MCP Connect about updates instead of WordPress.org. MCP Connect downloads the update.json attached to the latest release (a plain file download, so GitHub's API rate limit doesn't affect sites on shared hosting) and offers that release's mcp-connect.zip. Releases without update.json are read through the GitHub API instead. A release without mcp-connect.zip is never offered.

Translations

MCP Connect is fully translatable (text domain mcp-connect) and ships with Dutch (nl_NL). Each user sees it in their own admin language.

To add a language, translate languages/mcp-connect.pot (Poedit works well) and save it as languages/mcp-connect-{locale}.po plus the compiled .mo. Files in wp-content/languages/plugins/ also work, survive updates and take precedence.

After changing strings in the code, refresh the template and compiled files with WP-CLI:

wp i18n make-pot . languages/mcp-connect.pot --domain=mcp-connect --exclude=.github,languages,vendor,build
wp i18n update-po languages/mcp-connect.pot languages/
wp i18n make-mo languages
wp i18n make-php languages

Releasing a new version

1. Set the new version number in three places:

   • Version: in the header of mcp-connect.php
   • const VERSION in mcp-connect.php
   • Stable tag: in readme.txt

2. Add a = 1.2.0 = changelog entry to readme.txt. It becomes the GitHub release notes and appears in WordPress's "View details" popup. The release fails without it.

3. If strings changed, refresh the translation files (see Translations).

4. Commit, then tag and push:

   git commit -am "Release 1.2.0"
   git tag v1.2.0
   git push origin main v1.2.0

The Release workflow checks that the three version numbers match the tag, builds mcp-connect.zip and update.json, and publishes the GitHub release with both attached. Sites see the update within 12 hours, or straight away after Check for updates.

Tags with a hyphen, like v1.2.0-beta.1, become pre-releases, and sites ignore them. Draft releases are ignored too, so you can prepare release notes in a draft first: the workflow attaches the zip and publishes it when you push the tag.

Development

The plugin has no build step. To run the checks that CI runs on every pull request:

composer install
composer lint    # PHP syntax check
composer phpcs   # WordPress Coding Standards + PHP 7.4+ compatibility

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more, and SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability privately.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later