PilotDeck Connector

Description

If you have ever published to WordPress from an external tool and found the SEO fields
empty afterwards – no meta description, no focus keyword, no canonical, every post
credited to the same admin account – this plugin exists for that exact problem.

PilotDeck Connector publishes content from PilotDeck into this
WordPress site with the meta title, meta description, focus keyword, canonical URL,
FAQ structured data and the article’s author all intact, written into whichever SEO
plugin you already use.

Why a plugin is needed at all

WordPress core already exposes /wp/v2/posts, so creating a post remotely needs no
plugin. What core cannot do is write SEO meta. Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO and
SEOPress store their fields as post meta that is not registered with show_in_rest,
so core accepts the request, returns 201 Created, and discards those fields without
an error. For an SEO workflow that is a broken publish, not a partial one.

This plugin closes that single gap. Its surface is deliberately small.

What it does

• Creates and updates posts sent from your PilotDeck account.
• Writes meta title, meta description and focus keyword to whichever supported SEO
  plugin is installed – Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress. If none is
  installed, posts still publish normally.
• Writes the canonical URL for Yoast, Rank Math and SEOPress.
• Outputs FAQPage (schema.org) structured data in the page head, which SEO plugins
  do not generate because they cannot infer questions and answers from prose.
• Credits each article to its real author (new in 1.3.0) – see “Authors” below.
• Sets the featured image from a remote URL, including images served by CDNs from
  paths with no file extension.
• Assigns categories and tags, creating any that do not already exist.
• Honours a future publish date by scheduling the post rather than publishing it.

Authors (new in 1.3.0)

The authors you set up in PilotDeck now carry through to WordPress, so each article
is credited to the person who wrote it instead of one shared account. This supports
the author signals (E-E-A-T) that search engines and AI answers look for.

• Matched to an existing user. If a WordPress user who can write posts has the
  same display name as the article’s author, the post is credited to that user.
• Created when missing. If no such user exists, the plugin creates one with the
  Author role, the author’s name and bio, and their photo as the profile picture.
  The account gets a random password that is never shown and a placeholder email on
  the reserved .invalid domain, so nobody can sign in as it unless a site admin
  sets a password. You can edit, or reassign and delete, these users like any other.
• Person structured data. A schema.org Person block describing the author
  (name, job title, bio, photo and profile links) is added to the page head of each
  article, next to the FAQ block.
• Default author as a fallback. Articles without an author, or any article whose
  author user could not be created, are credited to the user you choose under
  Settings → PilotDeck, as before.

How connecting works

On activation the plugin generates a random 48-character key and stores it on your
site. Settings → PilotDeck shows an Integration Key that packs your site address and
that key together, so you paste one value into PilotDeck instead of two. You can
regenerate the key at any time, which immediately stops any previous copy from working.

Requests arrive over your site’s REST API and must present that key. Nothing else can
publish through this plugin.

External services

This plugin is a connector for PilotDeck, a paid third-party
content and SEO platform from Aveo Software. The plugin is not useful on its own – it
exists so that a PilotDeck account can publish into this site.

How data flows

The plugin does not send your site’s content, credentials or visitor data anywhere.
It does not phone home, collect analytics, or contact PilotDeck on its own. It only
listens.

PilotDeck connects inbound to your site’s REST API and sends the content you have
asked it to publish, including the article author’s name, bio, photo URL and profile
links. When it does, the plugin returns:

• the created or updated post ID, its public URL and status;
• your site name, site URL and WordPress version;
• which SEO plugin is installed, and the user ID configured as the post author;
• which parts of the request were applied (for example, whether the post was credited
  to a matched or newly created author).

That information is returned only in response to a request that already carries your
Integration Key, and only to whoever made that request.

Outbound requests (images only)

When a publish request includes a featured image URL, or an author photo URL for an
author user the plugin is creating, your site downloads that image so it can be added
to your media library. The request goes to whatever host that image is on – normally
PilotDeck’s own storage or your image CDN. No other outbound requests are made.

Terms and privacy

• PilotDeck website: pilotdeck.co
• PilotDeck Terms of Service
• PilotDeck Privacy Policy

By connecting this site to PilotDeck you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. A PilotDeck account
is required to use this plugin.