AI Publish — WordPress Plugin

AI Publish | Version 1.6.18 | By Doorways Into Your Business

About this plugin

AI Publish is a WordPress plugin that unifies AI-driven content generation, website publishing, and social media scheduling into a single editorial workflow. It manages a content calendar of articles, devotionals, and topic-cluster pillars, generates each piece in your own voice and brand, and pushes the finished content out to a network of target WordPress sites.

It is built for content teams and agencies that produce a high volume of long-form content across multiple sites and want generation, media, and publishing handled in one place — without spreadsheets.

Features

• Single content calendar — a dedicated content model (the aipub_article post type) holds every article, devotional, and pillar, tagged by target site.
• Multi-site target registry — connect any number of destination WordPress sites with encrypted credential storage and per-site connection checks.
• Async AI generation engine — body, excerpt, meta description, hero image, and tag classification are produced by AI as background jobs.
• Chunked body generation — long articles and pillars are written section by section so even large pieces complete reliably on shared hosting.
• Per-site voice & brand profiles — each site generates in its own tone, brand colours, and image direction; global defaults flow down to every site.
• Refreshable model catalogue — pick which AI models appear in the body and image selectors, and refresh the list as new models are released — no redeploy required.
• AI hero images — generated, imported as WebP featured images, and given AI alt text automatically.
• Image Studio — a dedicated workspace to test image models against a site’s brand, generate several variations side by side, compare them in a lightbox, and accept one as an article’s hero (which can update the live post).
• Many image models, including non-standard ones — generate with the built-in Google/OpenAI models or with fal.ai models such as FLUX, Recraft, Ideogram, Seedream, and Grok Imagine for styles the standard connectors can’t produce.
• Media organisation — articles and their hero images are auto-filed into the matching media folder by site; Image Studio images also collect in a dedicated “Image Studio” folder.
• One-click publishing — push a finished article to its target site as a draft for review, individually or in bulk; the hero image, excerpt, and tags are carried across, and re-publishing updates the same remote post in place.
• Social copy generation — turn an article into platform-native posts for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Threads, and Pinterest, then review and edit each in a per-channel editor with live character counts.
• Publish to social — push the per-channel copy to Postly as a draft, a scheduled post, or publish now, to your connected accounts; the article image is attached automatically.
• Bulk generation & Jobs monitor — queue generation (or publishing) for many articles at once and watch each job move through its steps in real time.
• SEO term research (NEURONwriter) — pull competitor NLP terms and suggested headings for an article’s focus keyword into its keywords and notes so generation targets what ranking pages cover.
• In-product help — a ”? Help” button on every screen plus a Help overview page that explains how content flows through the plugin.
• Calendar automation — opt-in per site: due planned articles are auto-generated and pushed to the target as drafts for review (never auto-published live), with pause/resume, bulk re-scheduling, per-article skip, and a readiness gate that holds incomplete articles back.
• Network cross-linking — finds genuine topic overlap between sister sites and proposes contextual backlinks (to articles and curated service pages), inserted only on approval. Topic brainstorming is also seeded with what sister sites have published, so new content is complementary, never duplicated.

What’s new in version 1.6.18

Versions 1.6.11 – 1.6.18 add two major capabilities: a hands-off content-calendar automation pipeline, and network cross-linking between sister sites.

• Calendar automation (1.6.11–1.6.12). Turn it on per site and a daily background run generates every planned article that has come due and pushes it to the target as a draft for your review — it never publishes live on its own. Includes a “Run due now” button, a global pause switch, bulk re-scheduling of selected articles (daily / per-week / per-month), and a per-article skip.
• Trustworthy statuses (1.6.13). A clean lifecycle — planned, generated, pushed as draft, published — with a dedicated “pushed draft” status for content awaiting review on the target. Statuses now self-heal from the target site’s real state on every push, going live clears the article’s calendar date, and the daily automation run is pinned to 9:00 a.m. site time.
• Readiness gate (1.6.14). Choose which fields an article must have (cluster, brief or topic, focus keyword) before automation may generate it; anything incomplete is flagged “Not ready” on the Calendar and held back.
• Network cross-linking (1.6.15–1.6.18). A new Network Links screen finds genuine topic overlap between an article and content on the other sites in the network — published articles and hand-curated service pages alike — and proposes a handful of natural, contextual links with suggested anchor text. Nothing is inserted without approval; approved links are hyperlinked in place and pushed to the live post. Bulk actions cover the existing back-catalogue, and topic brainstorming now sees what sister sites have published so new ideas pair with — rather than duplicate — them. The feature ships switched off per site until enabled.

Full changelog

1.6.18

• Added: Topic Ideas proposals are seeded with recent sister-site titles, as context only — the AI proposes complementary companion pieces, never rewordings. Completes the network cross-linking feature (Phase 6d).

1.6.17

• Added: ‘Add network links’ bulk action — a background job per article that proposes cross-links (and inserts + pushes them only where auto-insert is enabled). Sites with a link budget of 0 are skipped, so it is safe to run broadly.
• Added: inserted-but-not-yet-pushed links are tracked, so propose-only runs never write to a target site and re-runs never re-push unchanged content.
• Changed: the per-site cross-link budget now defaults to 0 (off) — enable per site when ready.

1.6.16

• Added: generation now proposes network cross-links for each new article within the site’s link budget, stored for review; an optional per-site setting inserts them into the draft automatically.
• Added: approve-and-insert on the Network Links screen — selected links are hyperlinked in place (anchor text is always a phrase taken verbatim from the article) and, for already-pushed articles, the updated body is pushed to the live post immediately.
• Added: per-site ‘Cross-links per article’ budget and ‘Auto-insert during generation’ controls on Prompts & Voice.

1.6.15

• Added: Network Links screen — for any article, see which sister-site articles and curated service pages genuinely relate (a deterministic keyword/cluster match), then ask the AI to propose link placements with natural anchor text. Read-only preview; the AI can only choose from the candidate list, never invent a URL.
• Added: per-site ‘Key destination pages’ store (service / CTA pages and the topics they serve) — equal-priority link targets alongside published articles.
• Fixed: saving a site’s Prompts & Voice profile no longer resets its calendar-automation and SEO settings.

1.6.14

• Added: calendar readiness gate — choose per site which fields an article needs (cluster, brief or topic, focus keyword) before it may auto-generate; incomplete articles are flagged ‘Not ready’ on the Calendar and held out of the queue.

1.6.13

• Added: ‘pushed draft’ status — pushed-for-review is now distinct from live, and filterable on the Content list.
• Changed: statuses self-heal from the target’s real post status on every push; going live clears the calendar date; already-live articles no longer appear in the calendar view; the daily automation run is pinned to 9:00 a.m. site time.
• Fixed: one-time cleanup normalized all 257 article rows to the new lifecycle and cleared 57 stale calendar dates on live articles.

1.6.12

• Added: global ‘Pause all automation’ switch; bulk re-schedule of selected articles (daily / per-week / per-month from a start date); per-article ‘Skip auto’ / ‘Allow auto’.

1.6.11

• Added: content-calendar automation — per-site opt-in; a daily run generates due planned articles and pushes each to the target as a draft for review (never live), with an optional social-copy draft and a ‘Run due now’ button.

1.6.10

• Added: ‘Publish live’ action (row + bulk, on Content and Calendar) – publishes the post live on the target and stores its real URL; pushes first if needed, flips an existing draft live, or just refreshes the URL if already live. Idempotent.
• Added: the remote URL now reflects the final permalink even while the post is a draft, so social copy links are correct.
• Changed: the ‘Publish’ action is now ‘Push draft’ / ‘Update draft’; re-pushing no longer downgrades an already-published post back to draft.

1.6.9

• Added: dashboard content matrix (site x status) and social matrix (site x social status), with the filter links on the counts; plus a social-status filter on the Social Publishing list and a ‘With social copy’ stat tile.
• Changed: the dashboard’s separate by-status and by-site tables are replaced by the matrices above.

1.6.8

• Added: a redesigned Dashboard – stat tiles, by-status and by-site breakdowns, recent posts, and a launchpad into every section.
• Added: row actions on the Content Calendar (Generate, Body images, Publish, Social copy, SEO terms, View live).
• Added: Use same image for all channels in the social editor.
• Changed: social channels default to all-on when publishing, with a fallback selector if the live account list is unavailable.
• Changed: Social renamed to Social Publishing; the old Social Publishing settings page renamed to Social Settings and moved under AI Settings.

1.6.7

• Added: Add body images to an existing article – tops it up to the per-site count, skips sections that already have an image, and pushes the new images to the live post if it is already published.

1.6.6

• Added: inline body images – generation now places AI images inside the article body under its section headings, and publishing sideloads them to the target site. Set the per-site count (0 to turn off) on Prompts & Voice.

1.6.5

• Fixed: re-publishing an article to its target site no longer fails (the update call was sending a field the API rejects), so re-publishes again carry the hero image across.

1.6.4

• Added: SEO term extraction via NEURONwriter — pull the competitor NLP terms and suggested headings for an article’s focus keyword into its keywords and notes, so generation weaves real ranking signals into the body. Trigger per article or in bulk from the Content list; watch progress on the Jobs page.

1.6.3

• Added: Markdown article importer — upload a correctly-formatted Markdown file and import it as a content-ready article (title, body, excerpt, hero image prompt), ready to publish and share.

1.6.2

• Added: SEO Planner — build local topical authority top-down (service area → categories → a pillar per category → cluster articles linking up to each pillar), with optional Perplexity research.

1.6.1

• Added: Topic Ideas — brainstorm a batch of post topics with AI, review/approve, and turn approved ones into dated planned articles.

1.6.0

• Added: a Content Calendar — plan upcoming posts per site with a target date, set each site’s posts-per-week cadence, and auto-distribute dates across the week. Filter by month or week.

1.5.13

• Added: bulk “Push selected” on the Social list — tick several articles and push them all at once (draft, schedule, or publish), each to its own provider and channels.

1.5.12

• Added: per-channel “shorten” — regenerate just one channel’s copy, tighter, without touching the others.
• Added: Google Business Profile as a social channel, and per-channel on/off so you only generate the channels you use.
• Added: a “Last push” column on the Social list, with a warning marker if any channel had a delivery issue.
• Improved: tighter, more on-target copy lengths per platform.

1.5.7

• Changed: the admin menu is now organised into three sections — AI Publish, AI Social, and AI Settings — for easier navigation.

1.5.6

• Added: attach images to social posts — each channel has its own picker from the Media Library, seeded with the article’s hero image; channels that allow it (Instagram, Facebook) post multiple images. Works for both Postly and Publer.

1.5.5

• Added: Publer is now a fully supported publishing provider alongside Postly — pick either one per site and push drafts, scheduled posts, or publish now to its connected accounts. (Text posts for now; images to follow.)

1.5.4

• Added: a Social Publishing overview page showing where each site posts (provider, workspace, allowed channels).
• Added: choosing a provider loads its workspaces, and a workspace loads its channels — then tick the channels a site is allowed to use, which limits what the push screen offers.

1.5.3

• Added: choose exactly which connected social accounts to publish to — the push panel now shows the workspace’s channels as a checklist (e.g. one Facebook page or both), remembering your last choice.

1.5.2

• Changed: when choosing where a site publishes socially, the Workspace is now a dropdown of your actual provider workspaces instead of a text box.

1.5.1

• Added: push generated social copy to Postly — as a draft, scheduled, or published now — to your connected channels, with the article’s image attached.
• Added: per-site choice of publishing provider and workspace (Postly now; Publer ready for later).
• Fixed: the Postly API key test in Settings now gives a definitive pass/fail.

1.5.0

• Added: social copy generation — an article becomes platform-native posts for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Threads, and Pinterest, written in the site’s voice with per-platform length and hashtag rules.
• Added: a Social screen to review and edit the copy per channel, with live character counters; generate for one article or many at once.

1.4.15

• Added: the Jobs page auto-refreshes while jobs are queued or running (with a toggle to turn it off).

1.4.12 – 1.4.14

• Changed: Generate and Publish now land on the Jobs page, and Jobs rows gained View, Edit, Publish/Re-publish, and “Live ↗” links.
• Fixed: an “SEO Materials” section could leak into the end of a generated article body.
• Fixed: a published article could end up with a duplicate category.

1.4.11

• Added: in the Image Studio, “Set as hero” now also updates the live post’s featured image when the article is already published — not just the local copy.

1.4.4 – 1.4.10

• Added: the Image Studio — a workspace to test image models against a site’s brand, generate variations, compare in a lightbox, and accept one as a hero.
• Added: fal.ai image models (FLUX, Recraft, Ideogram, Seedream, Imagen, GPT Image, Grok Imagine) alongside the built-in Google/OpenAI models.
• Added: Image Studio images auto-file into a dedicated “Image Studio” HappyFiles folder and their site’s folder.
• Improved: larger, crisper thumbnails; site + article shown on each card; the article picker filters by the selected site; sturdier generation with automatic retries.

1.4.2 – 1.4.3

• Added: an image generation log and a shared image service that records the site, model, prompt, and brand settings used for every image.
• Changed: per-site Brand colours, Fonts, and Avoid fields became multi-line for richer image-brand guidance.

1.4.1

• Changed: raised the per-step and AI connector time limits so slow image models complete instead of timing out; the 30-second request window is no longer a constraint on this host.

1.4.0

• Added: Phase 4 — publishing engine. Push a generated article to its target WordPress site as a draft, carrying the hero image, excerpt, and tags; re-publishing updates the existing remote post in place. Publish and bulk “Publish to site” actions, with publish jobs shown in the Jobs monitor. Test Mode simulates remote writes until you turn it off.

0.12.1

• Fixed: the Content → Articles list could show each article twice.

0.12.0

• Added: in-product Help system — a ”? Help” button on every admin screen and a Help overview page.

0.11.0

• Added: Phase 3b — chunked body generation (outline + one step per section) to stay under the 30-second host request limit; short content still generates in a single pass.
• Added: “Generate selected” bulk action on the Content → Articles list.
• Added: Jobs admin page — read-only view of the generation queue with per-step progress chips, status, duration, and article links.

0.10.0

• Added: HappyFiles folder integration — each article and its hero image are automatically filed into the media/article folder matching its site, with a live mapping table and per-site overrides.

0.9.0

• Added: [aipub_field] shortcode for surfacing article fields in templates.
• Fixed: hero images on imported articles and a blank article card on the front end.

0.8.0

• Added: refreshable model catalogue — choose which AI models appear in the body/image selectors and refresh the list without a redeploy.

0.7.0 – 0.7.2

• Added: per-site prompt & brand profiles — generation runs in each site’s voice, brand, and model configuration.
• Changed: profile editor polish (live model dropdowns, help text) and curated model shortlists.

0.6.0

• Added: content generation engine — AI body, hero image, excerpt, meta description, and tag classification, run as background jobs.

0.5.0 – 0.5.1

• Added: content management screens — sortable, filterable article list and a clusters/pillars overview.
• Added: rows-per-page selector; Fixed: published-date sorting.

0.4.0

• Added: Elementor Pro Theme Builder templates (single, card, and archive) for the article content type.

0.3.0

• Added: private-site lock (force-login) and a public, front-end-enabled content type behind that lock.

0.2.0

• Added: expanded API-key settings with live Test buttons and editable target sites.

0.1.0

• Initial project scaffolding.

About Doorways Into Your Business

Doorways Into Your Business (DIYB) is a digital agency based in Kingsville, Ontario, Canada, helping small businesses and non-profits build and grow their digital presence.

We specialise in WordPress development, custom plugin solutions, API integrations, and business automation.

Website: https://diyb.ca

Email: paul@diyb.ca

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