IATO MCP — Free WordPress MCP Plugin for Self-Hosted Websites

WordPress.com recently launched their own MCP server, letting AI agents read and write WordPress content. There's a catch: it only works on paid WordPress.com plans. If you're self-hosting WordPress — like 43% of the web — you're left out.

IATO MCP changes that. It's a free, open-source WordPress plugin that turns any self-hosted WordPress.org site into a full MCP server. 52 tools. Works with Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and any other MCP-compatible AI client. No subscription required, no limits.

What IATO MCP does

Install the plugin, and your WordPress site becomes an MCP server that AI agents can connect to directly. From a single AI conversation, an agent can:

• Read and write posts, pages, and media — create drafts, publish content, update existing posts
• Manage SEO metadata — read and write SEO titles and meta descriptions through Yoast, RankMath, or SEOPress
• Control navigation — list menus, view items, add pages to menus (with dry-run preview)
• Organize content — list categories and tags, assign terms to posts
• Bridge to IATO's crawler — run SEO audits, find content gaps, detect broken links, and fix issues directly in WordPress

All 52 tools are accessible through the standard MCP protocol, meaning any AI client that supports MCP can use them.

Why self-hosted matters

WordPress.org powers roughly 43% of all websites. The vast majority of these are self-hosted — on shared hosting, VPS, managed WordPress hosting, or local development servers. WordPress.com's MCP server doesn't reach any of them.

IATO MCP works everywhere WordPress runs. Shared hosting on Bluehost, a DigitalOcean droplet, WP Engine, Flywheel, Cloudways, or even a local development environment. If you can install a plugin, you can run an MCP server.

The 52 tools

IATO MCP organizes its tools into two categories:

WordPress Native Tools (40)

These tools read from and write to WordPress directly. No IATO account needed.

• Site management — get site info, settings, WordPress version, active theme, plus resolve_url to walk the rewrite cascade and detect Theme Builder template shadowing
• Content CRUD — list, get, create, update, and search posts and pages
• SEO data — read and write SEO titles, meta descriptions, canonicals, and JSON-LD structured data through whichever SEO plugin you use (Yoast, RankMath, SEOPress — auto-detected)
• Media — list media items, filter for missing alt text, update alt text
• Comments — list comments by status or post
• Navigation — full menu item CRUD: list menus, get items, add pages with dry-run preview, create arbitrary URL or page items, edit, delete, reorder
• Taxonomy — full term CRUD: list, create, update, delete categories and tags, assign terms to posts, bulk-replace post taxonomies
• Redirects — create or update redirect rules with auto-detection of Redirection, Safe Redirect Manager, Yoast Premium, or built-in fallback
• Page builders — detect active builder (Elementor, WPBakery, Divi, Gutenberg, Classic), document-level Elementor read/write, plus widget-grained editing with optimistic concurrency (if_revision), idempotency keys, bulk widget updates across many posts, and RFC 6902 JSON Patch for surgical array edits
• Rollback — reverse any AI-made write using its change_receipt ID; validates before_value to prevent stale rollbacks

IATO Bridge Tools (12)

These tools call the IATO API, then resolve everything back to WordPress post IDs and slugs so the AI agent can chain directly into WordPress native tools. Requires an IATO API key.

• Sitemap analysis — full URL hierarchy with WordPress post IDs per node
• Navigation audit — menu structure plus orphan pages with WordPress slugs
• Orphan detection — pages not linked from any navigation menu
• Taxonomy mapping — IATO categories mapped to WordPress term IDs
• SEO fixes — issues with fix type (auto or manual) and WordPress slugs
• Content gaps — thin content pages with word count, flags, and WordPress slugs
• Broken links — broken links mapped to source WordPress post IDs
• AI suggestions — AI-prioritized fixes across all areas with WordPress slugs
• Performance report — slow or heavy pages with contributing causes
• Crawl management — start a new crawl, check crawl status, list recent crawls

SEO plugin support

IATO MCP auto-detects which SEO plugin is active on your site and reads and writes the correct post meta keys:

• Yoast SEO — _yoast_wpseo_title and _yoast_wpseo_metadesc
• RankMath — rank_math_title and rank_math_description
• SEOPress — _seopress_titles_title and _seopress_titles_desc
• Fallback — native WordPress post title if no SEO plugin is detected

Detection happens automatically. No configuration needed.

How to get started

1. Download the plugin ZIP from GitHub
2. Upload via WP Admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
3. Activate — an API key is generated automatically
4. Connect your AI client — add your site's MCP endpoint URL to Claude Desktop, Gemini, or ChatGPT

For the 12 bridge tools, enter your IATO API key in Settings → IATO MCP. The 40 WordPress native tools work without an IATO account.

Full setup instructions, workflow examples, and technical details are on the IATO MCP plugin page.

What makes it different

Get started

• Download IATO MCP — free, open source
• Full plugin documentation — setup guide, tool reference, workflow examples
• IATO + WordPress MCP workflows — how IATO's crawler works alongside WordPress MCP
• MCP documentation — full reference for IATO's 105-tool MCP server