Connect your CMS
Publish straight to your own site - WordPress.org, WordPress.com, Ghost, Webflow, Shopify, HubSpot or GoHighLevel - with the connection tested before it is saved.
Connect a domain to the site it belongs to, and Publish sends a finished article straight there - text, links and picture. Mastheads publishes to seven platforms:
WordPress.org · WordPress.com · Ghost · Webflow · Shopify · HubSpot · GoHighLevel
A connection is optional. You can write, review and export without one, and connect later.
On this page
Where to connect
- During setup. If you set up a domain from your website, the last step is the connection: the scan has already detected your CMS and filled in your site address. Add your login details, or press Connect later.
- Any time after. Open Publishing in the left rail and connect the domain there.
Each domain has one connection. Your CMS connection is used for publishing only - proving the site is yours for Research and Quorl is done with Google Search Console instead.
Tested before it is saved
When you connect, Mastheads tries the details against your site straight away. If they do not work, nothing is saved and you are told why, so a wrong password never sits waiting to fail on your first publish.
What each platform needs
| Platform | What to know |
|---|---|
| WordPress.org | Connect with a user who can publish posts and upload images, such as an Editor. A user who cannot is refused with their role named. An administrator account works, but a dedicated Editor account is safer. |
| WordPress.com | Connect your WordPress.com account. |
| Ghost | Connect your Ghost site. |
| Webflow | Choose the CMS collection articles go into. It needs a Rich text field for the article body; a collection without one is refused, with a note of what to add. Webflow keeps new items staged until you publish your Webflow site. |
| Shopify | Choose the blog articles go into. |
| HubSpot | Give the Blog ID articles go into. HubSpot only lets us check it at your first publish. |
| GoHighLevel | Choose the location and the blog. Your account must already have at least one blog author and one category. |
For Webflow, Shopify and GoHighLevel, the destination you choose is tested along with your login details, so a wrong one is caught at connect.
Publishing an article
Open a finished article and press Publish. The panel tells you which site it is going to, and whether this creates a new post or updates one.
Publishing the same article again
- WordPress updates the same post in place.
- Ghost, Webflow, Shopify, HubSpot and GoHighLevel create a new post each time and leave the first one live.
The publish panel says which will happen before you press the button.
Categories and tags
Mastheads matches an article to the categories and tags your site already has. It never creates new ones in your site's taxonomy - a tag that does not exist on your site is left off rather than added.
The picture
On WordPress and Ghost, the article's picture is uploaded to your site's media library and set as the featured image. A theme that ignores WordPress featured images will not show it; a standard theme does.
The byline
On WordPress.org, match each author on your masthead to a WordPress user and their articles are filed under that user. Otherwise the post belongs to the account you connected with, and the byline appears in the article itself. See Voice and bylines.
Links to your own earlier articles
Once a domain has a connected site, each published article can carry up to three links to your own earlier articles on the same domain, chosen by the keywords they share. No AI is involved in picking them - it is your own archive matched against itself. On a new domain the list is empty, and it fills in as you publish.
Telling search engines
Once the domain's IndexNow key is verified, Mastheads tells Bing and the other IndexNow search engines the moment an article is published. Bing's index is also what Microsoft Copilot answers from.
Taking an article back
On WordPress, Unpublish moves the post to your site's trash - never a permanent delete, so you can restore it from WordPress - and keeps the article here as a draft. Mastheads first checks the post at that address is still the one it published; anything else is left alone. Unpublish is WordPress only.
When something goes wrong
If a publish fails, the reason shows next to the Publish button:
- "Your site did not answer" - the request never arrived. The article is saved as a draft; publish again when the site is back.
- "Your site did not confirm the post" - the post may already be there. Check your site before publishing again, so you do not end up with two copies.
Mastheads never repeats a post on its own once it might have landed.
If your site starts rejecting the saved login - usually because the connecting user was deleted or their role changed - the domain owner is told the same day, in the app and by email.
On a team
Publishing is its own permission. A team member needs publish and export to send articles to a connected site.
Related: Review and approval · Export and portability · Writing without a site