--- title: "How to add llms.txt to WordPress" url: https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/how-to-add-llms-txt-wordpress/ date: 2026-08-24 modified: 2026-08-25 lang: en author: "Aditya Sharma" description: "Publish a working /llms.txt index on your WordPress site with RankReady, then confirm it is live with one request." word_count: 813 --- # How to add llms.txt to WordPress By the end of this page your site will serve a working `/llms.txt` file, and you will be able to prove it is live rather than assume it. ## What llms.txt actually is llms.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain. It is an index. It opens with the name of the site and a short description of what the site is about, then lists links with one line of context each. The formatting is Markdown, so it stays readable to a person and cheap to parse for a machine. It exists because an HTML page carries a lot that a language model does not need: navigation, cookie notices, related post grids, inline scripts, tracking tags. A text index strips that layer away and points at the content directly. ## Be clear about what it does not do A file being present does not mean anything reads it. llms.txt is a proposed convention, not an enforced protocol. Some clients fetch it, some ignore it, and support changes without anyone announcing it. Publishing the file makes your content available in a clean form at a predictable address. That is the entire claim, and you should treat anything stronger with suspicion. The same caution applies to your logs later on. A crawler hit proves your page was fetched. It does not prove it was read, stored or quoted anywhere. ## Step 1: fill in Brand Identity first The header of your llms.txt is built from your brand details, so set those before you turn anything on. - In wp-admin, open **RankReady**. - Go to the **AI Visibility** tab. The address ends in `tab=crawlers`. - Open the **[Brand Identity](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/brand-terms-setup/)** subtab, `sub=brand`. - Fill in your site name, a one line summary of what the site does, and a longer about paragraph. - Save. Write the summary the way you would explain the site to a stranger in one sentence. It is the first thing in the file, and it is the line most likely to be read in full. ![RankReady Brand Identity settings showing site name, summary and about fields](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rr-brand-identity-v2-scaled.png)Brand Identity feeds the header block of your llms.txt file. ## Step 2: turn on llms.txt - Stay in the **AI Visibility** tab. - Open the **llms.txt** subtab, `sub=llms`. - Switch the feature on. - Save the settings. No API key is needed. llms.txt is generated from content that is already in your database, so there is no [AI provider](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/choose-ai-provider-cost/) involved and no per request cost. The AI provider keys in RankReady are only used by [AI Summaries](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/generate-ai-summaries-wordpress/) and the FAQ Generator. ![The llms.txt settings screen inside the RankReady AI Visibility tab](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rr-llms-txt-v2-scaled.png)The llms.txt subtab under AI Visibility. ## Step 3: verify it worked Open `https://your-site.com/llms.txt` in a browser. You should see plain text, not a 404 page and not your theme. For a stricter check, use curl and look at the headers: `curl -sI https://your-site.com/llms.txt` A correct response looks like this: - `HTTP/2 200` - A `Content-Type` of `text/plain` - An `ETag` header The ETag matters. RankReady supports conditional requests on `/llms.txt`, so a client that already has a copy can ask whether anything changed instead of downloading the file again. Take the ETag value from the first response and send it back: `curl -sI -H 'If-None-Match: "PASTE_THE_ETAG_HERE"' https://your-site.com/llms.txt` If nothing has changed since that ETag was issued, you get `HTTP/2 304` and an empty body. That is the correct answer, not a failure. Then read the body itself: `curl -s https://your-site.com/llms.txt | head -30` You should see your site name, your summary, then the link list. If the summary is missing or generic, go back to Brand Identity and fill it in properly. ## If you get a 404 A 404 almost always means WordPress rewrite rules are stale or something else claimed the route first. Work through this in order: - Go to **Settings, Permalinks** and click Save Changes. You do not need to alter anything. Saving rebuilds the rewrite rules. - Reload `/llms.txt`. - If you run LiteSpeed alongside [Rank Math](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/rankready-with-yoast-rankmath-aioseo/), clear your page cache as well. That combination has been known to intercept the route. RankReady 1.3.0 added a raw request path fallback for exactly this case. If the file loads but shows an old version, clear any full page cache or CDN cache in front of the site and try again. ## Where this fits with your SEO plugin RankReady sits alongside Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework and Slim SEO. It does not replace them. It has no title editor, no meta description editor and no XML sitemap, so nothing here competes with the plugin you already use for search. Your sitemap keeps doing its job for search engines. llms.txt is a separate, simpler index aimed at clients that want plain text. ## What to do next If your site is small enough to fit in one file, look at `/llms-full.txt`, which serves the whole corpus in a single document rather than a list of links. If you want individual posts available as clean Markdown, turn on the Markdown endpoints so every post also answers at `/{post-slug}.md`.