PostCaster

PostCaster publishes WordPress posts to Bluesky and Mastodon when a post goes live. It supports both site-wide accounts and personal author accounts, with previews, test posts, and per-post overrides on the post edit screen.

This plugin is intended for editorial sites that want social posting to stay close to the WordPress publishing workflow.

Key capabilities:

• Publish automatically when a post moves from unpublished to publish
• Use site-wide accounts in PostCaster > Global socials
• Let authors use their own accounts in PostCaster > My socials
• Preview the exact text before publishing
• Override the text per article
• Choose featured-image behavior per network
• Re-publish manually from the post edit screen when needed

Quick start:

1. Activate the plugin.
2. Enable PostCaster in PostCaster > Settings.
3. Choose which post types may be published automatically.
4. Configure one or more site-wide accounts in PostCaster > Global socials.
5. Send a test post for each configured network.
6. Publish a test article and confirm the result on the target network.

Supported networks:

• Bluesky

• Mastodon
  Permissions and publishing model:

• Editors and administrators can publish through configured global accounts.

• Authors can publish through their own personal accounts when personal publishing is enabled for them.
• A user who has access to both global and personal targets can choose which targets to use during manual publishing.
• If Co-Authors Plus is active, linked co-authors are also recognized for personal publishing.

Templates and previews:

• The default message template is based on post title and URL.
• You can set a general template, network-specific templates, and post-specific overrides.
• The post edit screen shows previews for the currently available publish targets.
• If the final message is still too long for a network, PostCaster skips that target and stores an error on the article.

For template details and examples, see docs/templates.md in the plugin repository.

Troubleshooting highlights:

• Always use the built-in test-post buttons after changing credentials.
• If a network is enabled but not posting, first check credentials and article-level errors.
• If encrypted credentials can no longer be read, re-save them in Global socials or My socials.
• Publishing runs through Action Scheduler in the background; low-traffic sites still benefit from a real server cron job or scheduled task for reliable timing.

External services:

PostCaster connects to external social networks only after an administrator or user explicitly configures that network and saves the required credentials.

When configured, PostCaster may send:

• text rendered from post fields and templates
• featured image bytes and alt text
• the configured account identifiers required by that network

Relevant service documentation and terms:

• Bluesky developer docs: https://docs.bsky.app/
• Bluesky terms: https://bsky.social/about/support/tos
• Mastodon API docs: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/api/
  Privacy note:

PostCaster does not send usage analytics or telemetry to the plugin author. Network requests are only made to the configured social networks for test posts and actual publishing.