ChatGPT custom connector for your website: what it is and how to set one up

A ChatGPT custom connector lets ChatGPT call tools on a server you run, so you can ask it questions about your own data and, if you allow it, take actions. For a website, that means your team can ask ChatGPT “who are this week’s hottest leads?” and get an answer from your site, not from a guess.

Under the hood, a custom connector is a remote MCP server. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard for letting AI apps use tools. ChatGPT, Claude and other apps speak it, so one server works with all of them.

This guide uses our own MCP add-on for WordPress as the worked example, because we know exactly what it does. The requirements and the security checklist apply to any connector.

What your website needs

To be added as a ChatGPT custom connector, your site has to run an MCP server that ChatGPT can reach. In practice that means:

• HTTPS on a public address. ChatGPT connects from OpenAI’s servers, so localhost or a staging site behind a login will not work.
• An MCP endpoint over Streamable HTTP. For the Agent Front Desk add-on this is https://YOUR-SITE/wp-json/afd-mcp/v1/mcp.
• OAuth for sign-in. ChatGPT connects to custom connectors with OAuth. Your server needs the discovery documents under /.well-known/, so your web server must serve that path.
• Tools named the way ChatGPT expects. ChatGPT looks for a search tool and a fetch tool for reading. Our add-on exposes both, plus 13 more.

For WordPress specifically, the add-on needs WordPress 6.9 or newer and pretty permalinks.

Which ChatGPT plans can add one

From OpenAI’s help article Connecting custom MCP servers in ChatGPT, checked on November 4, 2026:

Plan	What you can do
Business	Full MCP support, including write actions, on ChatGPT web. Only admins and owners can create and publish the connector for the workspace.
Enterprise and Edu	The same, plus admins can use role-based access to let selected members create connections and choose who can use each app. Only admins and owners publish.
Pro	Connect custom MCP servers with read and fetch permissions only.
Plus, Go and Free	Not listed for custom MCP servers in that article.

So if your team wants ChatGPT to take actions on your site, such as updating a lead, plan on a Business or Enterprise workspace and an admin who sets it up. For read-only questions, Pro works. OpenAI changes these rules often, so check the article again before you plan around a specific plan.

The setup steps

These are the steps for our add-on. The ChatGPT menu names change often, so treat them as a guide, not a script.

1. Install and activate the MCP add-on in WordPress, alongside the core Agent Front Desk plugin.
2. Copy the connector URL from Front Desk, MCP access, in wp-admin.
3. In ChatGPT, go to Plugins, select the plus button, then Add custom MCP server. You no longer need to turn on Developer mode first.
4. Create it. Give it a name, paste the connector URL under Connection, and choose OAuth for authentication. Read the risk warning, tick the box, and select Create as a plugin. ChatGPT then lists the tools it found.
5. Sign in and choose access. ChatGPT sends you to your own WordPress login, then to a consent screen where you pick Read only or Read and write. Press Allow.
6. Ask it something. “List my leads from the last seven days” is a good first test.

An honest note: we have run this OAuth flow end to end with the official MCP client software, locally and through a public HTTPS address, and we have used the token route from the real Claude Code command line. We have not yet clicked through the ChatGPT app’s own screens ourselves, so we check the connector with each client at install.

What it can do once connected

With read-only access, your team can ask for hot leads, read a conversation, see bookings, find the questions the assistant could not answer, search the knowledge base, and check usage and costs. That is 12 read tools.

With read and write, three more tools open up: update a lead, reply in a live chat, and add knowledge. Adding knowledge also needs a WordPress administrator. The tools always act with the WordPress role of the person who approved the connection.

The security checklist

A connector is a door into your data, so judge any connector, ours or anyone else’s, against this list.

• OAuth 2.1 with PKCE. Ours accepts only the S256 method and matches redirect addresses exactly.
• Read-only should mean read-only. A read-only grant should be refused every write, on the server, not just hidden in the app.
• Short-lived access. Our access tokens last one hour. Refresh tokens last 30 days and rotate, and reusing an old one revokes the whole grant.
• An audit log. Every call and every denial should be recorded with which app made it. Ours is in wp-admin.
• One-click disconnect. When you remove an app, its tokens should stop working immediately.
• No middleman. Our server runs inside your WordPress. There is no third-party service in between, and nothing is stored by us.

Limits to know

• Your site must be public. A connector cannot reach an intranet site.
• The apps change. ChatGPT’s menus, plan rules and connector behavior shift often. Expect to re-check after updates.
• Not a store listing. A custom connector is private to you or your workspace. It is not a listing in ChatGPT’s app directory, and we do not claim one.
• The model still decides. ChatGPT chooses when to call a tool. Ask specific questions and it calls them more reliably.

See it working

The MCP add-on page has the full setup for ChatGPT, claude.ai and Claude Code, and a recorded clip of Claude Code connected over MCP listing hot leads and the most common unanswered question on our demo site.

Questions about connecting your own site? Email [email protected].