You can edit a WordPress site with Claude AI without copying anything into the chat. Once Claude is connected to your site, you just say what you want (“tighten the intro on the About page”, “add alt text to every image that’s missing it”) and Claude reads the page, prepares the change and shows it to you before anything is saved.
This guide shows the exact setup, step by step, using SPD MCP, a free WordPress plugin we built for this. It takes about ten minutes and you don’t need to write any code.
What you need
- A WordPress site running WordPress 6.6 or newer and PHP 8.1 or newer
- HTTPS on the site (almost every host gives you this free now)
- An administrator login for WordPress
- A Claude plan that lets you add custom connectors
How it works, in one paragraph
Claude can use outside tools through MCP, the Model Context Protocol. A WordPress MCP plugin adds an endpoint to your site that offers Claude a list of tools: find posts, read a page, update a post, change SEO fields, fix image alt text and so on. When you ask for something, Claude picks the right tool and calls it. Your content stays on your server; Claude only sees what a tool returns. If you want the longer explanation, read our plain-English guide to MCP servers.
Step 1: Install the plugin
- Download SPD MCP, the free WordPress MCP plugin.
- In WordPress go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the ZIP and click Install Now.
- Click Activate.
You’ll now see SPD MCP in the admin menu.
Step 2: Copy your endpoint
Open SPD MCP → Connect. At the top you’ll see your MCP endpoint, a URL that ends in /wp-json/spd-mcp/v1/mcp. Click copy.
Step 3: Add it to Claude
- In Claude, open Settings → Connectors.
- Click Add custom connector.
- Give it your site’s name and paste the endpoint URL.
- Claude opens a WordPress approval screen. Log in if asked, choose whether Claude may only read or also make changes, and approve.
That’s it. The connection shows up under SPD MCP → Connect, where you can revoke it at any time.
Step 4: Start with something read-only
Open a new chat, switch the connector on and ask something that changes nothing:
“List my 10 most recent posts and tell me which ones are missing an SEO description.”
You’ll see Claude call tools like posts_list and seo_missing_report. This is a good moment to check that it’s looking at the right site.
Step 5: Make your first change
The plugin starts in read-only mode, so nothing can be saved yet. When you’re ready, go to SPD MCP → Controls and turn read-only mode off.
Now ask for a small edit:
“Rewrite the first paragraph of my About page so it’s shorter and mentions that we work with clients worldwide. Show me the change before saving.”
Claude reads the page, then calls the update tool as a preview. You see the old text and the new text side by side. Nothing is saved until you say yes. Because the About page is already live, the plugin also asks for an explicit approval before it commits. Once it does, a recovery snapshot of the old version is stored, so you can undo it later.
Things you can ask Claude to do
- “Find every post that mentions our old phone number and update it.”
- “Write SEO titles and meta descriptions for the five posts that don’t have one.”
- “Add descriptive alt text to images in the media library that have none.”
- “Create a draft landing page for our new service with a hero, three features, pricing and an FAQ.”
- “Put these three posts in the WordPress category and set a featured image.”
- “Show me what changed on the site this week.”
New pages and posts are created as drafts, so you can review them in the normal WordPress editor before publishing.
What it won’t do
This matters as much as what it can do. SPD MCP works through WordPress’s own functions, so Claude edits content, not code. It cannot run PHP, open a shell or edit theme and plugin files. It won’t publish over a live page without your approval, and it never sees your passwords.
If you need Claude to edit files on a custom PHP or HTML site instead, that’s what PHP AI Bridge is for.
If something goes wrong
- Claude can’t connect: make sure the site uses HTTPS, that the endpoint opens in your browser and that SPD MCP is version 1.3.4 or newer. Older versions needed
/.well-known/URLs for sign-in, which some hosts block; 1.3.4 also works without them. - Changes are refused: read-only mode is probably still on.
- You don’t like a change: ask Claude to “restore the last snapshot for this page”, or do it under SPD MCP → Recovery.
Try it on your site
SPD MCP is free, with no license key and no trial. Install it, connect Claude, and start with a read-only question. You can be making your first real edit within ten minutes.