MCP, Model Context Protocol, is an open standard from Anthropic that lets an AI assistant call real tools on a real system, instead of just chatting about it. Without MCP, you can paste your WordPress content into Claude or Cursor and ask questions about it, but the assistant cannot actually create a post, upload media, or check your site settings for you.
An MCP server for WordPress changes that. It exposes your site’s actions, publishing a post, updating a product, listing users, as callable tools. Connect an MCP client (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and others all support MCP) to that server, and the assistant can act on your site directly, inside whatever permissions you allow.
This course walks through three real WordPress MCP server plugins, Royal MCP, miniOrange Secure MCP Server, and WPVibe, and shows the exact steps to connect each one to Claude and to Cursor. Pick whichever fits your setup, you do not need all three.