How to Build an MCP Server for WordPress

1. Introduction

Managing content across platforms can be a real challenge, especially as websites grow in size and complexity. That’s where Model Context Protocol (MCP) steps in. MCP is an emerging standard that allows structured, AI-friendly access to your website’s data—including WordPress.

By building an MCP server for WordPress, you can make your content more accessible to AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and others. These assistants can use the structured information to answer questions, summarize posts, or even automate basic admin tasks.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to set up an MCP server that connects directly with your WordPress site. Whether you’re a developer exploring AI integrations or a content manager looking to automate workflows, this guide will walk you through the setup step by step.

2. What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a communication protocol that enables AI models to interact with structured data. Think of it as a bridge between your content systems and large language models. Rather than asking a model to “guess” the content of your site, MCP gives it direct, safe, and scoped access to the information it needs.

Unlike traditional APIs, which can be broad and inconsistent, MCP follows a standardized format. It exposes your data in a way that’s easy for AI models to read, reason over, and respond to. For example, instead of pulling raw HTML from a blog post, an AI assistant can use MCP to retrieve just the headline, summary, and author information in a structured format.

MCP also includes safety mechanisms. It ensures that models don’t overreach by defining access limits. This way, your data stays secure, and the AI behaves as expected.

In short, MCP is designed for modern use cases—especially those involving language models. As AI becomes more integrated into daily workflows, protocols like MCP will play a critical role in connecting content platforms like WordPress to intelligent tools.

3. How MCP Works with WordPress

To understand how MCP works with WordPress, let’s look at how both systems manage and share data.

WordPress is built on a powerful content management system (CMS) that stores posts, pages, users, media, and more. While it already offers a REST API for external access, it wasn’t designed with AI models in mind. This is where Model Context Protocol (MCP) fills the gap.

MCP as a Smart Bridge

MCP acts as a smart bridge between WordPress and AI systems. Instead of sending raw, unstructured data, the MCP server formats your WordPress content into clean, structured schemas. These schemas define the data types, relationships, and fields—such as post title, author, content, tags, and more. As a result, AI assistants don’t have to guess or parse messy HTML. They get exactly the information they need, and nothing more.

Safe, Scoped, and Smart Access

Another major benefit of using MCP with WordPress is controlled access. You can define exactly what parts of your website the AI can see. For example, you might allow access to published posts but block access to drafts or private data. This makes the integration not just powerful—but also safe and responsible.

Real-World Example

Imagine an AI assistant helping your readers find articles on your blog. Instead of crawling your site blindly, the assistant sends a structured query through MCP:
“Give me the latest three posts tagged with ‘fitness’.”
The MCP server translates that into a WordPress API call, fetches the data, formats it, and returns it in a clean, schema-based structure. The AI can then summarize or display that data to the user instantly.

By connecting MCP to WordPress, you’re not just enabling access—you’re enabling intelligent, secure, and context-aware access to your content.

4. Prerequisites

Before you start building your MCP server for WordPress, you need to set up a few things. While this guide uses Python for the implementation, you can also build an MCP server using Node.js or any other modern backend framework. The key is to follow the MCP specification and structure your data correctly.

What You’ll Need

To get started, make sure you have the following:

✅ A running WordPress site
You can use a local development environment (like Local or XAMPP) or a live site.
✅ Basic Python knowledge
This guide uses Python for building the MCP server, so some experience with Flask or FastAPI will be helpful.
✅ Access to the WordPress REST API
This is how your MCP server will fetch data such as posts, users, and media. You may need application passwords or an authentication plugin if your API requires login.
✅ Postman or an API testing tool
To test your MCP endpoints during development.

5. Step-by-Step: Setting Up the MCP Server for WordPress

Let’s walk through how to build an MCP server for WordPress using Python. We use FastMCP, SQLAlchemy, and WordPress REST APIs to create a smart interface that AI tools or other services can interact with. This setup allows structured access to your data and adds support for managing WordPress content—such as creating blog posts and retrieving them.

5.1 Set Up Your Environment

Start with a clean Python project.

✅ Requirements

Python 3.9+
fastmcp
sqlalchemy
pymysql
python-dotenv
requests (for REST API calls)

Install dependencies:

pip install fastmcp sqlalchemy pymysql python-dotenv requests

Add your MySQL and WordPress credentials in a .env file:

MYSQL_USER=root
MYSQL_PASSWORD=yourpassword
MYSQL_HOST=localhost
MYSQL_DATABASE=yourdbname

WP_BASE_URL=https://yourwordpresssite.com
WP_USERNAME=youradmin
WP_APP_PASSWORD=yourapppassword

MCP_HOST=127.0.0.1
MCP_PORT=5000
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable-http

You can create an Application Password in WordPress to securely access REST APIs.

5.2 Initialize the MCP Server for WordPress

Use FastMCP to define your tools and connect your database:

mcp = FastMCP("WordPRessMCP", port=port, host=host)

Your script now includes tools to fetch table schemas, query data, and even manage users—all exposed via MCP.

5.3 Add Blog Management via WordPress REST API

To extend functionality beyond raw SQL, we integrated WordPress REST APIs into the MCP server. These tools allow external clients to:

✍️ Create a New Blog Post tool

import requests

@mcp.tool("create_blog_post")
def create_blog_post(title: str, content: str, status: str = "publish") -> str:
    """Create a new blog post in WordPress."""
    wp_url = os.environ["WP_BASE_URL"] + "/wp-json/wp/v2/posts"
    auth = (os.environ["WP_USERNAME"], os.environ["WP_APP_PASSWORD"])
    data = {"title": title, "content": content, "status": status}
    
    response = requests.post(wp_url, auth=auth, json=data)
    if response.status_code == 201:
        return f"✅ Blog post created: {response.json().get('link')}"
    return f"❌ Failed to create blog post: {response.text}"

📄 Fetch Existing Blog Posts

@mcp.tool("get_blog_posts")
def get_blog_posts(limit: int = 5) -> list[dict]:
    """Retrieve recent blog posts from WordPress."""
    wp_url = os.environ["WP_BASE_URL"] + f"/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page={limit}"
    auth = (os.environ["WP_USERNAME"], os.environ["WP_APP_PASSWORD"])
    
    response = requests.get(wp_url, auth=auth)
    if response.status_code == 200:
        posts = response.json()
        return [{"title": p["title"]["rendered"], "link": p["link"]} for p in posts]
    return [{"error": "Failed to fetch blog posts."}]

These REST-powered tools make your MCP server a complete control layer for both database and content.

5.4 Define more Useful Tools for WordPress

This implementation includes tools such as:

get_tables(): Lists tables in your DB schema.
get_table_schema(table_name): Shows the CREATE TABLE statement.
create_wp_user(...): Creates a new WordPress user directly in wp_users and wp_usermeta.
delete_wp_user(user_login): Deletes a WordPress user safely.
fetch_data_by_query(sql_query): Executes raw SQL queries with optional parameters.

These tools turn your WordPress site into a structured, AI-ready database—perfect for smart clients that speak MCP.

5.4 Launch the MCP Server

Run the script:

mcp dev server.py

# or

python server.py

Your server will be live on the specified host and port, ready to serve tools through the MCP protocol.

With this setup, you’re not just exposing WordPress data—you’re giving AI agents a smart, secure way to read and write to your site via structured tools. Whether it’s creating users or publishing blog posts, the MCP server bridges the gap between WordPress and intelligent applications.

Conclusion

Setting up an MCP server for WordPress opens the door to smarter, more structured interactions with your website. By combining FastMCP, SQLAlchemy, and the WordPress REST API, you’ve created a flexible system that can handle everything—from database queries to creating blog posts and managing users.

This solution is ideal for developers building AI assistants, admin dashboards, or automation tools that need real-time access to WordPress content and structure. With just a few tools, your MCP server becomes a powerful interface between WordPress and any external system.

Whether you’re using Python or switching to Node.js, the core idea remains the same: MCP lets you define reusable, composable actions that make WordPress smarter and more accessible.

Now that your server is live, you’re ready to build more tools, add authentication, or connect it to front-end apps, bots, or custom UIs.

🚀 The future of WordPress integrations is structured, secure, and AI-friendly—thanks to MCP.

Categories: machine learning

Darshan 3-June-2025

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