Publishing an article to WordPress.
One click sends your article to your site. It sends the title and the HTML — and nothing else. No categories, no tags, no featured image, no meta description and no schema.
One click from the editor puts your finished article on your WordPress site. Before you use it, read the section on what isn't sent — it's the single most common support question we get, and knowing the answer in advance saves you an afternoon of confusion.
Publishing an article
Connect your site first, on the Channels page: type your site address, click Connect WordPress, and approve ScoutRival on your own site. No plugin, nothing to copy. Connecting your WordPress site →
Open the finished article
The orange Publish button sits in the editor's action bar, top right. It's the bar's primary action — everything else is a dropdown next to it.
Pick the site
The dropdown lists your connected WordPress sites. If you haven't connected one it reads Connect WordPress first and sends you to Channels.
That's it
The button reads Publishing…, then you get a confirmation. The post is on your site.
Publishing an article costs nothing. No credits, no limit on how many times you push the same article.
Draft or live is a connection setting
You do not choose “draft” or “publish” per article. It's a property of the connection, set once on the Channels page, and it applies to everything you send through that site.
| Publish mode | What arrives in WordPress |
|---|---|
| Draft only | A WordPress draft. Nothing goes live until you press Publish inside WordPress yourself. |
| Queue / Auto | A live post, published immediately. |
Draft-only mode means a mis-click can't put a half-finished article on your live site. You still get the whole article inside WordPress, ready to check over, add a featured image to, and publish on your own terms. Change it on Channels whenever you're ready.
Exactly what gets sent
Two things. That's the whole payload:
- The title — your article's H1.
- The article body, as HTML — headings, paragraphs, lists, blockquotes and links, converted faithfully from what's in your editor.
Plus the draft-or-live status that comes from your connection's publish mode. Nothing else crosses the wire.
Exactly what does not get sent
Everything ScoutRival generated around the article stays in ScoutRival. Publishing sends the title and the HTML — and that is all. You paste the rest in yourself.
Specifically, none of these are sent to WordPress:
- Categories — the post lands in your site's default category.
- Tags — none are set.
- The slug — WordPress generates its own from the title.
- The excerpt — empty.
- The featured image — none. Your thumbnail is not attached; you upload it in WordPress.
- The meta title and meta description — the ones in your SERP preview card do not reach Yoast, Rank Math, or any other SEO plugin.
- The JSON-LD schema — your FAQPage, HowTo and Author structured data is not injected into the page.
- The FAQ block — unless it's already part of the article body, it doesn't travel on its own.
So the working routine after a publish is:
Open the SEO pack in ScoutRival
Under the article: SERP preview → Copy meta. Paste the title and description into your SEO plugin.
Copy the JSON-LD
FAQ schema (JSON-LD) → Copy code. Paste it into your theme's head, or into whatever field your SEO plugin gives you for custom schema. Without this you lose the structured data your Content Score was built on.
Set the category, tags and featured image
In WordPress, the way you always have. Then publish.
If you'd rather do the whole thing in one paste, Export as Markdown hands you the article plus an SEO Pack appendix — meta, FAQ, keywords, citations and the raw JSON-LD — in a single file. Exporting →
After you publish
- The article's status in ScoutRival does not change. It still reads Ready. Publishing is a one-way push to your site, not a state change here — so a published article looks identical to an unpublished one in your library. Keep track of what you've shipped on your own site, not in ScoutRival.
- Publishing twice creates two posts. There is no update-in-place. If you fix a typo and publish again, you get a second WordPress post — edit the first one in WordPress instead.
- The push is logged. Each attempt is recorded against your connection, with a link to the post it created or the error it hit. You'll find it under the connection on the Channels page.
When publishing fails
You'll get the real error back, not a shrug. The three common ones:
- “WordPress rejected the credentials.” The connection was revoked on the WordPress side — someone deleted the “ScoutRival” entry under Users → Profile → Application Passwords. Reconnect the site on Channels.
- “Couldn't reach the WordPress REST API.” Usually a security plugin blocking
/wp-json/, or a site URL with a typo in it. Confirm you can openyoursite.com/wp-json/in a browser. - “WordPress didn't respond in time.” The request is given 15 seconds. A slow or sleeping host will time out. Try again.
- “This article has no body to publish yet.” The article hasn't been generated. Generate it first.
A failed publish marks the connection with an error state on the Channels page. Fixing the credentials and posting a test clears it.