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WordPress Integration with Adaptify SEO

This guide explains how to connect WordPress to Adaptify SEO, publish articles automatically, and troubleshoot common issues. It also covers agency white-label plugin branding, publishing issue alerts, and how Adaptify falls back when API publishing is blocked.

WordPress integration enables:

• One-click publishing from Adaptify to WordPress
• Automatic metadata handoff for supported SEO plugins (Yoast, RankMath, AIOSEO Pro)
• Author, category and tag selection inside Adaptify
• Better visibility into publishing failures and site connection status

Adaptify SEO WordPress Plugin

When you set up your website in Adaptify:

1. Go to Enable One-click Publishing
2. Select WordPress
3. Follow the on-screen steps to install the plugin and connect your site

White-labeled WordPress plugin (Agency Plan)

Many agencies prefer that plugins on client sites do not mention Adaptify. Adaptify supports a self-updating branded plugin that you can configure inside your account:

• Set the plugin name
• Set the author name
• Download a generated ZIP
• Install it on any client WordPress site

Important behaviors:

• The branded plugin is self-updating, so future updates appear as normal WordPress plugin updates.
• Plugin branding is saved at the team level. If one team member configures it, everyone on the team can use the same branded plugin.

Where to configure it

Go to:

• My Account → WordPress Plugin

There you can:

• Edit plugin name + author name
• See a preview
• Download the branded plugin again any time

What changes in the One-Click Publishing setup flow

• If you have not configured a branded plugin, Adaptify will show both options (official plugin vs branded plugin).
• Once you have configured a branded plugin, the flow defaults to branded plugin installation and treats the Adaptify plugin as a fallback option.

Installing the plugin on WordPress

Option A: One-click install from the WordPress plugin directory

If offered in your setup flow:

1. Click Install Plugin
2. WordPress opens with a pre-filled search for the plugin
3. Click Install Now
4. Click Activate

For reference the plugin can be found here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ada-seo-by-adaptify/

Option B: Upload and install the branded ZIP plugin

1. In WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New
2. Click Upload Plugin
3. Choose the ZIP you downloaded from Adaptify
4. Click Install Now
5. Click Activate

After activation, go back to Adaptify and complete the connection step. This plugin will have no Adaptify branding and will have your agencies branding instead.

Important: confirm plugin installation after any changes

When installing the plugin, and each time the plugin is deactivated and reactivated, you must confirm the installation again in Adaptify:

1. Go to One-Click Publishing for the site
2. Confirm the connection (you will see a prompt to confirm)

This also applies when switching WordPress users (see “Changing Users”).

WordPress publishing fallback (API → CRON Fallback method)

Adaptify normally publishes to WordPress via the WordPress API. In some environments, the API can be blocked, for example:

• Security plugins blocking REST API requests
• Hosts/firewalls blocking application passwords or API endpoints
• Aggressive security rules that break the block editor API

When this happens, Adaptify may automatically switch to a fallback publishing method.

What to know:

• The fallback method is more robust in restrictive environments.
• It can take more time than API publishing.
• If the site URL is invalid or the plugin is not installed, the fallback will fail after aprox. one hour and Adaptify will surface a publishing issue.

If you see publishing problems, the dashboard badge is the quickest place to start.

Publishing issue alerts

Adaptify detects publishing errors, you will see:

• A Publishing issues badge on the dashboard per site

This helps agencies catch issues early, before clients notice missing content.

Author, categories, and tags

Adaptify can pull WordPress data so you can publish with the right attribution and taxonomy.

Authors

• Adaptify can pull WordPress users as authors
• The WordPress user must be Contributor or above
• If the user is a Subscriber, they will not appear (they cannot create content)

Categories

• Categories are pulled from WordPress
• You can select categories per-article (and refresh if you recently created new categories)

Tags

• Tags are only shown if tags exist on the WordPress site
• Some sites do not use tags, so this may not appear

Refreshing data after changes

If you add authors/categories/tags in WordPress:

• Return to Adaptify’s article details
• Use Refresh to re-pull the latest values

Note: refresh can take around a minute because it re-syncs multiple items.

Best practice: create categories in WordPress first

If you want consistent category assignment:

• Create the category in WordPress
• Then set your category selection logic (see below)

Category selection logic (Advanced Writer Settings)

If you want Adaptify to follow a specific category selection approach:

• Go to Writing Style → Advanced Writer Settings
• Update the category guidance/logic there

This works best when the target categories already exist in WordPress.

What metadata Adaptify sets when publishing

When an article is published via One-Click Publishing, Adaptify automatically sets the key metadata WordPress expects. This reduces manual cleanup and ensures SEO plugins receive the correct fields.

Adaptify sets:

• Post title
• URL slug
• Excerpt (when supported by the theme)
• Featured image
• Categories
• Tags (if enabled on the site)
• Author
• Meta title + meta description (via supported SEO plugins)
• Social metadata (when supported)

If metadata is missing, it is usually caused by:

• SEO plugin REST API disabled
• Security plugin blocking API access
• Application passwords disabled
• Publishing fallback mode being triggered

In those cases, check the security plugin section below.

How Adaptify handles images

Adaptify automatically handles article images during publishing, including compression and SEO metadata.

Image compression

All images are compressed and optimized before publishing. We do not expose fixed image dimensions or file sizes because compression adapts to content and layout. If your site has strict image requirements, theme-specific sizing, or custom CDN rules, contact support and we can advise on best practices.

Image metadata

Images are published with SEO metadata unique to each article.

Image hosting behavior

There is an important distinction:

• Header (featured) images

→ uploaded directly into your WordPress media library

• In-content images

→ hosted using a whitelabeled CDN and embedded into your posts. For SEO performance, and to avoid any bandwidth issues on your site. All images are yours and you are at full discretion hosting the images yourself too.

SEO Plugin support

It is great idea to have an SEO plugin on your WordPress website.

Yoast

We fully support Yoast, and have also optimised our articles for good Yoast scores. When you install our plugin we automatically populate relevant metadata.

RankMath

We also fully support RankMath. RankMath is feature rich and has some features that greatly compliment Adaptify SEO. When you install our plugin we automatically populate relevant metadata.

AIOSEO Pro

We only support the paid version of AIOSEO, and when you install our plugin we automatically populate relevant metadata.

In order to get AIOSEO to correctly integrate with Adaptify follow these steps:

1. You must have at least a "Plus" user account with AIOSEO.

2. Activate the Rest API feature is the AIOSEO settings.
1. Login to your Wordpress admin
2. On the left hand side you will see All in one SEO
3. Click on "feature manager"
4. Toggle the Rest Api to "Activated"

Important: confirm plugin installation after any changes

When installing the plugin, as well as each time the plugin is deactivated and reactivated, you need to go the “One-click Publishing” settings in your Adaptify dashboard, and confirm the new plugin installation:

WordPress Plugins with potential conflicts

WordFence

If a user has WordFence installed, by default articles will not be published.

The setting ““disable WordPress application passwords” needs to be disabled.

On newer versions of WordFence his can be found under “Firewall” and under “Brute Force Settings”. For older versions, please this setting can be found under “settings” and under “Additional Options”:

Note: some older versions of WordFence do not have any settings. In this case you can either upgrade to a newer version of WordFence with granular settings, or disable to WordFence plugin

The firewall can also be an issue for posting content to a WordPress website with WordFence enabled.

Rankmath has a useful guide on how to fix this:

https://rankmath.com/kb/whitelist-rank-math-in-wordfence/

iThemes Security Pro

Similar to WordFence, in iThemes Security Pro, Application Passwords need to be enabled in order for Adaptify to work. You can do this by navigating to User Groups → Administrator Users. And then under “Two-factor” enable the “Application Passwords” switch:

PatchStack

Similar to WordFence, PatchStack is also a security plugin that disables WordPress application passwords. Unfortunately, PatchStack does not offer granular settings to control this, so the only option is to disable it (and install another security plugin like WordFence instead).

SolidSecurity by SolidWP

This security plugin is not compatible with Adaptify SEO out of the box. If you have installed Adaptify SEO already, you need to first make the below changes, and then set up Adaptify SEO again.

Loom Setting up Two-Factor Authentication for WordPress Site 👩‍💻

Follow these steps in this order:

1. Go to your site and find the Solid Security plugin, then navigate to to SolidSecurity → Settings → Features → Login Security → Two-Factor. And enable Two Factor Authentication. This setting needs to be enabled for the next setting to appear. Press Save

2. Go to Users, check your role and remember it (eg Administrator), click on your username, and go down to the bottom of the page, there is a purple box called Two-Factor Authentication. Press Configure and follow the steps.

3. Go to SolidSecurity → Settings → User Groups → Features → Application Passwords. And enable Application Passwords for Administrators and Editors or the role of your user in step 2. Press Save

4. Navigate to the Adaptify SEO dashboard, One-Click Publishing → Step 1: “I have activated the plugin → Step 2: Reset. (if you have not set up the plugin yet, no need to press Reset, just follow the usual steps).

5. Go back to your site and navigate to Plugins and find Ada SEO By Adaptify → Deactivate → Activate. This resets the integration, now test-publish an article and it should work.

Other common issues with SolidSecurity:

• make sure API access is enabled and looks like this:

• make sure the account you activate the plugin on has the “All API Types” setting in the accounts page with Read Only disabled:

All In One WP Security

The All In One WP Security plugin blocks application passwords. It does not give an error on WordPress’ side but it does mean articles fail to publish.

The setting to take a look at first is Disabled application password. Which can be found by going to:

“WP Security” → “User Login” → “Additional settings”

And then deselect this box:

Also make sure the REST API is not switched off:

LiteSpeed Cache

This plugin will often make the WordPress REST API inaccessible in its attempt to optimize pages, which will prevent Adaptify SEO from publishing articles. It doesn’t have an option to clear cache, so the only way is to deactivate it (and possibly use another caching plugin if needed, see WP Rocket below).

AUTO BLOG ENGINE 2.0 - WPO

This plugin prevents Adaptify from publishing articles and will need to be disabled for Adaptify to work.

Hostinger Tools

This is an all-in-one plugin designed to streamline essential tasks for WordPress site administrators. It blocks application passwords which prevents articles from being published. This plugin needs to be disabled for Adaptify to work.

WP Rocket

This plugin is compatible with Adaptify SEO, but sometimes its cache gets clogged and blocks the WordPress REST API (which is needed for the Adaptify SEO plugin to function). In this case, you’ll need to go to the WP Rocket plugin settings and press first “Clear Cache” and then “Clear Critical Images”:

Changing Users

To switch the WordPress user used for publishing:

1. Log in as the new user in WordPress
2. Deactivate and Reactivate the Adaptify plugin
3. Log into Adaptify
4. Choose the site
5. Go to One-Click Publishing
6. In Step 3, confirm the new username when prompted

Common Issues

One-Click Publishing not working at all

If nothing publishes and everything appears broken:

1. Confirm the plugin is active in WordPress
2. Confirm application passwords are enabled
3. Check security plugins (WordFence / SolidSecurity / etc.)
4. Reset integration in Adaptify
5. Deactivate → Reactivate plugin
6. Test publish a single article

If the dashboard shows a Publishing issues badge, click into it first. It usually points to the root cause.

If unsure, email support and include:

• Site URL
• Screenshot of One-Click Publishing screen
• Screenshot of WordPress plugins page

Authors or categories missing

Causes:

• WordPress user role too low
• API access blocked
• Categories recently added and not refreshed

Fix:

• Ensure the WordPress user is Contributor or higher
• Press Refresh in article settings
• Confirm REST API is not blocked by security plugins

Note: Application passwords require a user role that can publish posts.

Posts publish but formatting looks wrong

Common causes:

• Some form of Editor plugin
• Theme overriding list and heading styling in an uncommon way.
• Block restrictions or page builder conflicts.

Fix:

• Test publish with default theme.
• Check theme documentation for compatibility.

Blog posts publish successfully but do not appear on the blog page

If Adaptify shows a successful publish but the article is not visible on the website blog, this is almost always a WordPress display configuration issue, not a publishing failure.

Adaptify publishes WordPress posts, not pages. The blog page on the site is responsible for deciding which posts it shows. Some themes only display posts from specific categories or filters.

Common causes:

• Blog page is filtered to a specific category
• Theme excludes uncategorized posts
• Custom blog template only shows selected tags
• Caching delay
• Posts assigned to a hidden category
• Permalink structure recently changed

Fix:

• Open WordPress → Posts → All Posts

Confirm the article exists

• Check which category the post was assigned to

Compare with categories shown on the blog page

• Edit the blog page template or theme settings

Look for filters limiting which posts display

• Temporarily assign the post to the main blog category

Refresh the site

• Clear site cache / CDN cache

Important notes:

• Adaptify cannot create WordPress pages

Only posts are supported

• URL structure is controlled by WordPress

Adaptify does not change permalink settings

• Duplicate URLs are automatically prevented

If the post exists in WordPress but not on the front end, the issue is 100% theme or filtering logic.

Header image not showing on blog post

Go to Appearance → Customize → Layout → Blog → Featured Images → Posts → and check “Display featured images”

If you have any questions, email us at Support@adaptify.ai and we will be glad to help.

On this page

• WordPress Integration with Adaptify SEO
• Adaptify SEO WordPress Plugin
• White-labeled WordPress plugin (Agency Plan)
• Where to configure it
• What changes in the One-Click Publishing setup flow
• Installing the plugin on WordPress
• Option A: One-click install from the WordPress plugin directory
• Option B: Upload and install the branded ZIP plugin
• WordPress publishing fallback (API → CRON Fallback method)
• Publishing issue alerts
• Author, categories, and tags
• Authors
• Categories
• Tags
• Refreshing data after changes
• Best practice: create categories in WordPress first
• Category selection logic (Advanced Writer Settings)
• What metadata Adaptify sets when publishing
• How Adaptify handles images
• Image compression
• Image metadata
• Image hosting behavior
• SEO Plugin support
• Yoast
• RankMath
• AIOSEO Pro
• Important: confirm plugin installation after any changes
• WordPress Plugins with potential conflicts
• WordFence
• iThemes Security Pro
• PatchStack
• SolidSecurity by SolidWP
• All In One WP Security
• LiteSpeed Cache
• WP Rocket
• Changing Users
• Common Issues
• One-Click Publishing not working at all
• Authors or categories missing
• Posts publish but formatting looks wrong
• Blog posts publish successfully but do not appear on the blog page
• Header image not showing on blog post