PilotDeck Connector

Yes. The plugin is a connector; it does nothing without a PilotDeck account sending content to it.

Nothing. The plugin generates a key, adds one settings screen, and waits. It does not alter your posts, your users, your theme, your database beyond two options, or your site's front end until a connected PilotDeck account publishes something. You can deactivate and delete it and the site is exactly as it was. If you want to see what it would publish, there is an overview at pilotdeck.co.

No. Posts publish normally either way. If Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress is installed, the plugin also fills in the SEO fields. If none is installed, there is simply nowhere for a meta description to go.

If you've linked this author to a WordPress user from inside PilotDeck (either by importing your site's users or by PilotDeck creating the account itself), that exact user is used - no matching needed. Otherwise, it looks for a WordPress user who can write posts and whose display name matches the article author's name in PilotDeck, ignoring upper and lower case. If it finds one, the post is credited to that user. If not, it creates a new user with the Author role for that person. Articles with no author go to the Default author chosen on the settings screen.

For a linked author, PilotDeck is the source of truth for their profile. PilotDeck keeps that user's display name, Biographical Info and profile photo in sync automatically, so an edit made directly in WordPress is overwritten on the next sync. Make the change in PilotDeck instead, or unlink the author there first if you want to manage that WordPress user by hand going forward.

Only when an author in PilotDeck has no linked or matching user yet - either when PilotDeck publishes an article by them, or as soon as that author is added in PilotDeck, whichever happens first - and only with the Author role, which can write and edit their own posts and nothing else. The account has a random password that is never shown and a placeholder email on the reserved .invalid domain, so it cannot receive mail or be signed into until a site admin sets a password. To avoid a new user, give an existing user the same display name as the author in PilotDeck before publishing.

Matching uses the display name exactly as written, apart from case. "Jane Doe" and "Jane A. Doe" are different names. Change the display name of your existing user (or the author's name in PilotDeck) so they are the same, then publish again. Posts already credited to the extra user can be reassigned when you delete it.

Yes. Each article with an author gets a schema.org Person block in the page head, built by PilotDeck from the author's profile (name, job title, bio, photo and profile links). It sits alongside any Article schema your SEO plugin outputs. Re-publishing an article without an author removes the block.

In your site's options table, like any other WordPress setting. It is generated on your site and never transmitted by the plugin. Treat it like a password: anyone holding it can publish to your site.

The previous key stops working immediately, everywhere it was pasted. Publishing resumes once you paste the new key into PilotDeck.

No. Updates are only ever applied to posts this plugin created on this site. A request that points at anything else - a page, or a post written by a human - is refused rather than overwritten.

Content PilotDeck marks as a standalone page, such as a landing page, is created as a real WordPress Page rather than a post. It is excluded from categories, since Pages do not use that taxonomy. Everything else - how it was uploaded, how it can be updated, the Author restriction above - works the same as a post.

Some servers, mainly Apache running PHP over CGI or FastCGI, strip the Authorization header before WordPress sees it. The plugin checks the standard fallback used by those setups and also accepts an X-PilotDeck-Key header. If it still fails, ask your host to pass the Authorization header through to PHP.

Both of its options and the post meta it wrote, including the FAQ and author structured data, plus the profile-photo link it set on author users. Your posts, images, categories, tags and users - including author users the plugin created - are left untouched, because they belong to your site and are credited on published posts.