One API key — articles become topics on your own forum.
Discourse has a first-class API and DraftSEO writes straight into it. You create a key in your admin area, give it five narrow permissions, pick which category articles go in, and each article is posted as a topic on your own forum — server-rendered, crawlable, and on your domain. Be clear about what that means: a Discourse topic is a forum thread, not a blog post. It carries forum chrome and your members can reply to it. That is genuinely useful for search, and it is not the same thing as a blog — if you want blog-styled pages, connect the site that runs your blog instead.
| Connection | API key + username — Admin → API → Keys, with granular scopes |
|---|---|
| What gets created | A forum topic, not a blog post — members can reply; it carries forum chrome |
| Image hosting | Your own forum — uploaded before the topic is created, never hot-linked |
| Self-hosted | Free and open source — the API is part of core |
| Discourse-hosted | Pro plan and up — the Free tier has neither API access nor a custom domain |
| Posting account | Admin or moderator — a regular account hits new-user link limits and a 24-hour edit window |
Who does what
Nothing, once the key is in. Topics appear in the category you chose and your members can reply to them like any other thread. Want to stage one? Post it unlisted — reachable by link, out of every list.
Works with your forum exactly as it is configured.
Setup
In your Discourse open Admin → API → Keys and create a key. Choose Granular rather than Global — a global key is effectively full admin access and you should not hand that to any tool. Tick Topics → write, Topics → read, Posts → edit, Uploads → create and Categories → list. Those five are exactly what DraftSEO uses and nothing more.
~3 minutes
The key posts as a particular user. Pick an admin or moderator: a regular account runs into Discourse’s new-user limits on links and images, and more importantly loses the ability to edit its own post after 24 hours — which would stop DraftSEO from ever updating or repairing an article again.
~1 minute
Connect a site → Discourse → paste your forum’s address, the key and the username, then pick a category. DraftSEO checks the key’s permissions and tells you by name if one is missing, and it checks — without signing in — that your forum is actually readable by the public and allows search engines.
~2 minutes
FAQ
No, and we would rather say so plainly. Each article becomes a Discourse topic: a thread in a category, with forum chrome, that your members can reply to. It is a real, server-rendered, indexable page on your own domain, which is what makes it worth doing for search — but it will look like a forum thread, because it is one. If you want blog-styled articles, connect the site that runs your blog.
Each one does a specific job: write a topic, read it back, edit the post when an article is updated or an image is repaired, upload the images, and list your categories so you can pick one. We ask for granular scopes precisely so you do not have to hand over a global key, which in Discourse is effectively full admin access.
Then nothing published there can be found by search engines, and DraftSEO will tell you at connect. It checks this the only way that is meaningful — by asking your forum without signing in, the same way a crawler would. It also reads your robots.txt and warns if indexing is switched off.
Onto your own forum, uploaded before the topic is created — so the topic is posted once, complete, and never appears briefly with broken pictures. The post stores Discourse’s own internal image references rather than web addresses, so they keep working even if you later move your forum to different storage.
It is Discourse’s own idea of a quiet post: the topic exists and anyone with the link can read it, but it stays out of every topic list and your sitemap, and it is served with a no-index instruction. It is not a private draft. Only staff accounts can create unlisted topics, which is another reason to use an admin or moderator.
Not for this. Discourse’s hosted Free tier includes neither API access nor a custom domain, and you need both — the API to publish at all, and your own domain for the SEO to be worth anything. Their Pro plan and above include both, and self-hosting is free and open source.
The same topic is edited, so its address never changes. DraftSEO reads the live post first and sends what it read alongside the change, so if a moderator edited the topic in the meantime Discourse rejects the overwrite instead of silently discarding their work, and DraftSEO re-reads and retries.
No card required. Self-hosted or Pro. Images on your own forum.