Connect ChatGPT to your own WordPress site over the Model Context Protocol. ChatGPT reaches your site through a custom connector and you sign in on your own domain — there is no relay in between, no account to create with us, and no config file to edit. Setup takes about a minute once MCP Manager is installed.
Free plugin · No account · Runs on your own server · Any WordPress host
Connection method
Custom connector, remote URL
Authentication
OAuth sign-in on your domain
Config file
None — nothing to edit
Watch: ChatGPT connector walkthrough
Before you start
You need AcrossAI MCP Manager installed and active on the WordPress site you want ChatGPT to reach, plus an administrator account on that site. If you have not installed it yet, follow the Get Started guide first — it takes about a minute, and the official WordPress MCP Adapter ships bundled inside the plugin, so there is nothing separate to install.
ChatGPT is different from the editor-based clients. It has no config file and no npx bridge: it calls your site over the public internet from its own servers, so the site must be reachable at a real domain over HTTPS with a certificate a browser would trust. Nothing is installed on your machine, and you never paste a password anywhere — see the ChatGPT Connectors overview for how the connector model works.
How to connect ChatGPT to WordPress
Step 1
Open Quick Connect and copy your server URL
In wp-admin go to AcrossAI → MCP, open the server you want to expose, and start Quick Connect. Pick ChatGPT from the client list. The wizard gives you one thing: the URL of your MCP server. On a default install that is https://example.com/wp-json/acrossai/mcp, with your own domain in place of the example.
There is no password step here. ChatGPT is a connector client, so Quick Connect does not offer to generate an Application Password for it.
Step 2
Add a custom connector in ChatGPT
In ChatGPT open Settings → Connectors and choose to add a custom connector. Give it a name you will recognise — your site’s name works well — and paste the URL from step 1 as the MCP server URL. Leave any optional header or API-key fields empty: your site authorises through sign-in, not a static secret.
ChatGPT moves this screen around between releases, and workspace administrators can control who may add connectors. If you cannot find it, that is a ChatGPT-side setting — nothing on your WordPress site affects it.
Step 3
Sign in on your own site to authorise it
ChatGPT sends you to an authorisation screen served by your domain. Log in with the WordPress account you normally use, read what the connector is asking for, and approve it. Your site then issues ChatGPT a token of its own. No Application Password is created, no secret is copied between windows, and your WordPress password is only ever typed into your own login form.
The authorisation server is part of MCP Manager and runs on your domain. There is no AcrossAI gateway sitting in the middle of the exchange, and we never see the token, the approval or the requests that follow it.
You authorise as a WordPress user, so the account you sign in with is the account whose permissions apply from then on. Sign in as the user you want ChatGPT to act as.
Step 4
Turn the connector on in a chat and test it
Start a new conversation and enable your connector for it. Your site’s toolsets become available to ChatGPT from that point on. Ask something harmless to confirm it is live — “Which plugins on this site need updating?” is a good first test.
Want the one-click ChatGPT connector?
AcrossAI Pro turns this setup into a managed one-click connector, with the controls a live site needs:
- See every connected client and revoke it in one click
- Require admin approval before anyone connects
- Gate tools by membership level across ten providers
What ChatGPT can do once it is connected
With Abilities Manager installed alongside it, ChatGPT reaches 350+ abilities across 14 toolsets — rising past 800 once it detects the plugins you already run. From an ordinary conversation, with no wp-admin tab open, it can:
- Read and edit content — posts, pages and any custom post type with their meta and revisions, and surgically edit a page’s block tree without rewriting the page.
- Debug a broken site — read the debug log with secrets redacted, check Site Health, list recent fatal errors and un-pause what WordPress auto-disabled.
- Inspect the database — schema and table sizes, index health, bloated autoloaded options, or
EXPLAINon a slow query. - Manage plugins, themes and core — search WordPress.org, install, update, roll back, and verify files against official checksums.
- Work with files — inside an allowlist you define, with a dangerous-extension blocklist and optional pre-image backups of everything it touches.
- Reach the plugins you already run — WooCommerce, Elementor, ACF, Rank Math, Yoast, WPCode and more, each registering only when that plugin is active.
Every ability runs WordPress’s own capability check for the user who authorised the connector, so ChatGPT can never do anything that account could not already do. See the full platform overview for the complete catalogue.
Frequently asked questions
Is connecting ChatGPT to WordPress free?
AcrossAI MCP Manager and Abilities Manager are both free and GPL on WordPress.org, and there is no AcrossAI account to create. You use the ChatGPT account you already have — AcrossAI never charges for AI inference, because none of it runs here.
Do I need an Application Password for ChatGPT?
No, and there is no manual Application Password route for ChatGPT at all. It is a connector client: it has no config file to hold credentials, so the only way in is the connector plus the OAuth sign-in on your own domain. If a guide tells you to paste WP_API_PASSWORD somewhere for ChatGPT, it is describing a different kind of client.
Does my site data pass through AcrossAI servers?
No. The connector points at your own domain and every request terminates at your /wp-json/ route, including the sign-in that authorises it. There is no AcrossAI relay, gateway or telemetry anywhere in the path. ChatGPT does make those requests from its own infrastructure, and whatever it reads is processed by your AI provider — treat it as you would any other prompt.
Can ChatGPT break my site?
Every ability runs WordPress’s own capability check for the account that authorised the connector, so ChatGPT can never exceed what that account can already do. Higher-risk operations refuse to run without an explicit confirmation flag, file access is confined to an allowlist you define, and any ability can be disallowed site-wide. Authorising as an editor rather than an administrator narrows it further.
How do I disconnect ChatGPT again?
Two places, and either one is enough. Remove the connector in ChatGPT’s settings, or revoke the authorisation on your own site under AcrossAI → MCP. Access is re-checked on every request, so revoking on the WordPress side takes effect immediately even though the connector is still listed in ChatGPT.
Troubleshooting
There is no option to add a custom connector
Custom connectors are governed entirely by ChatGPT: the account you are signed into, and — in a team or enterprise workspace — whether an owner has allowed members to add their own. Nothing in wp-admin turns that on. Check with whoever administers the workspace, or try from a personal account, then return to step 2.
ChatGPT will not accept the server URL
Paste the full endpoint, not your home page: https://yourdomain.com/wp-json/acrossai/mcp. Because ChatGPT calls from its own servers rather than your machine, the site has to be publicly reachable — a local development site, a staging site behind HTTP basic auth or an IP allowlist, a “coming soon” plugin, or a Cloudflare rule that challenges non-browser traffic will all fail here. A self-signed certificate is rejected outright; unlike a local bridge there is no NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED escape hatch, so the certificate must be genuinely trusted.
The sign-in screen appears but the authorisation never completes
The OAuth exchange bounces between ChatGPT and your domain, so anything that interferes with those round trips breaks it. Set permalinks to something other than Plain, confirm a security plugin is not blocking or rate-limiting /wp-json/, and exclude the MCP routes from page and edge caching — a cached authorisation response sends the next person the wrong answer. If your site redirects between www and the bare domain, use whichever form your site actually settles on.
You are signed in but ChatGPT lists no tools, or refuses the request
An empty catalogue means the connection works and there is nothing in it: either Abilities Manager is not installed, or the abilities exist but are not exposed to this server. Open AcrossAI → MCP, select the server, and check its Tools and Abilities tabs — then remove and re-add the connector, because MCP clients receive their tool list once, at connection time. A request that is refused rather than empty is the access gate: a new server requires manage_options until you add a rule, and it fails closed. Note that the rule is evaluated against the account you signed in with in step 3, not the account you are using in wp-admin.
It worked yesterday and stopped today
Access is re-checked on every request, not just at authorisation. A change to the signing-in user’s role, capability or membership takes effect immediately, and an authorisation that is already in place does not keep working. Revoking the connector’s access under AcrossAI → MCP has the same effect. Re-authorising from ChatGPT restores it once the underlying permission is back.
Connect a different AI client
The same server works with every MCP client. Editor-based clients use a config file and an Application Password instead of a connector — see the guides for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Codex and every other client.
Not installed yet?
Install MCP Manager on your site, then come back and run Quick Connect.