Using the Viraly WordPress Plugin

The Viraly WordPress plugin adds the full Viraly dashboard inside your WordPress admin — auto-post new blog entries to 10 social platforms on publish, compose original posts, view the content calendar, and check analytics without leaving WP. It’s a free, GPL-licensed plugin on the official WordPress.org directory.

Installing the plugin

Three ways to install, in order of easiest:

1. From WP admin (recommended) — go to Plugins › Add New, search for Viraly, click Install Now, then Activate.
2. Upload ZIP — download the latest release from wordpress.org/plugins/viraly, then Plugins › Add New › Upload Plugin.
3. Manual / FTP — extract the ZIP into wp-content/plugins/viraly/ and activate from the Plugins page.

Requirements: WordPress 5.0 or later, PHP 7.2 or later. Tested up to WordPress 6.9.

Connecting your Viraly account

After activation, click Viraly in the WordPress admin sidebar. You’ll be prompted to connect to the Viraly platform:

• If you already have a viraly.io account, sign in and link this site to your workspace in one click.
• If you don’t yet, the plugin will create a free account for you using your WordPress admin email. No credit card required.

Once connected, the dashboard shows your plan, connected social profiles, and quick links to the composer and calendar.

Adding your first social profile

From the plugin’s Manage Profiles screen click Connect Social Profile. Each platform redirects you to its official OAuth consent page — you never paste API keys.

• Instagram — Business & Creator accounts, for Posts / Reels / Stories
• Facebook Pages, TikTok, X (Twitter), LinkedIn
• Pinterest, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon

Auto-posting blog entries on publish

Go to Viraly › Blog to Social. The core settings:

• Channels — check the social profiles you want to post to automatically.
• Timing — Immediately, After a delay (minutes, hours, or days), or At a set daily time in your site’s timezone.
• Category filter — only auto-post articles from specific WordPress categories (e.g. skip your News category, only auto-share Guides).
• Post type filter — include posts, pages, custom post types, or any combination.
• Featured image — included automatically and routed to the right field for each platform (Instagram post image, Twitter card, etc.).
• Duplicate prevention — the plugin tracks which posts have already been auto-shared to each channel and won’t repost.

Hit Save. From that point, every new post that matches your filters is auto-shared to the selected channels on publish. If the delayed/scheduled option is set, you’ll see the queued share in the calendar.

Caption templates & merge tags

The caption field on the Blog to Social screen accepts merge tags that get replaced with values from the WordPress post at publish time:

• {TITLE} — the post’s title
• {EXCERPT} — the custom excerpt, or an auto-generated one if empty
• {POST_LINK} — the permalink
• {AUTHOR} — the author’s display name
• {TAGS} — comma-separated tag list (e.g. #SEO #WordPress #Marketing)
• {CATEGORIES} — comma-separated category list
• {DATE} — publish date in your site’s format
• {SITE_NAME} — the site title set in Settings › General

A typical template:

✨ New on the blog: {TITLE}

{EXCERPT}

Read more → {POST_LINK}
{TAGS}

You’ll see a live preview with a sample post in the configuration panel before saving.

Per-post overrides in the editor

Every post and page in the block editor gets a Viraly sidebar panel (open via the star/sparkles icon in the editor header). Inside it you can:

• Turn auto-sharing on or off for this specific post — useful for drafts you don’t want auto-shared.
• Pick which channels to share to, overriding the global default.
• Override the caption — write a bespoke caption for this post instead of using the template.
• Share Now — instantly share an already-published post (great for reposts).
• Schedule from the editor — pick a date and time for this post’s social share without leaving the editor.
• Template preview — see exactly what will be posted to each platform before publishing.
• Auto-post results — after publishing, see which platforms accepted the post and any error messages.

Post composer & content calendar

The plugin isn’t just auto-posting. Under Viraly › Scheduler you get the full Viraly composer:

• Write once, customize per platform — different post type (Post vs. Reel vs. Story), different caption, different first comment.
• Schedule for any future date and time, timezone-aware.
• Draft auto-save (24‑hour localStorage persistence) so you never lose your work.
• Emoji picker, URL preview with Open Graph metadata, per-platform character counter.

The content calendar is the same as the one at app.viraly.io — monthly and weekly views, drag-and-drop to reschedule, click a cell to open the composer pre-populated for that date.

Analytics inside WordPress

Under Viraly › Analytics you get the full analytics experience for each connected platform — audience demographics (age / gender / location), growth and engagement charts, per-post performance tables, and CSV export with custom date ranges. Data retention goes from 2 weeks on the Free plan up to 5 years on Enterprise.

AI captions & hashtags

Every caption field in the plugin has an AI button that reads the post’s title and content and suggests a caption tailored to the target platform. Pick from eight tones: Neutral, Casual, Formal, Humorous, Inspirational, Persuasive, Educational, or Excited. See Using the AI Caption Generator for the full walkthrough.

Hashtags are generated the same way, and the plugin respects each platform’s best-practice limit automatically — e.g. five hashtags for Instagram, a single hashtag for Threads.

Classic editor support

The plugin works with both Gutenberg and the Classic Editor. On Classic, the Viraly controls appear as a metabox on the post edit screen rather than a sidebar panel — same features, different layout.

What happens when you uninstall

Deactivating the plugin keeps all of your WordPress-side settings in place, so you can toggle it back on without reconnecting. Deleting the plugin runs a full cleanup: all plugin options, post metadata, and transients are removed from your WordPress database.

Your Viraly cloud account and connected social profiles remain intact at app.viraly.io. You can reconnect by reinstalling the plugin or by using the main Viraly web app directly.

Troubleshooting

• Auto-post didn’t fire on publish. Check Viraly › Blog to Social is enabled, the post’s category is included, and the channels are connected. The Gutenberg sidebar also shows the auto-share status per post.
• A platform returned an error. The Gutenberg panel and the Recently Shared screen show the raw error from each platform (token expired, post-type unsupported, rate limit, etc.). See Troubleshooting Failed Posts for the common causes.
• A connection looks broken. Open Manage Profiles, find the profile, and click Refresh. Social platforms expire OAuth tokens periodically — Viraly rotates them automatically but a manual refresh fixes edge cases.
• WordPress cron is disabled on your host. Scheduled auto-posts use Viraly’s server-side scheduler, not WP-Cron, so they still fire on time regardless of your host’s cron configuration.