Last updated: September 2026
WordPress.com Guidelines is a new feature that lets you save persistent instructions for your website’s purpose, audience, brand voice, formatting, images, blocks, and other site standards.
Compatible WordPress.com AI tools can then use those Guidelines as site-level context, reducing the need to explain the same preferences every time you work with AI.
In simple terms, Guidelines gives your WordPress.com site a form of memory.
Instead of repeatedly telling an AI assistant how your business writes, what your website is trying to accomplish, which terminology you prefer, or how your images should look, those instructions can remain attached to the site itself.
That makes Guidelines more interesting than another AI writing feature.
It represents a shift toward websites that can carry more of the knowledge required to manage them consistently.
Quick Answer: WordPress.com Guidelines are persistent site-level instructions that help compatible AI tools and collaborators understand how your website should look, sound, and operate.
Guidelines can define:
- your website’s purpose
- your intended audience
- writing voice and tone
- formatting preferences
- image standards
- instructions for individual WordPress blocks
- terminology preferences
- additional team or brand rules
Administrators can find the feature under Settings → Guidelines.
Guidelines are optional and editable. They provide context rather than acting as rigid restrictions, so website owners remain in control of both the instructions and the resulting content.
Table of Contents:
How Do WordPress.com Guidelines Work?
The basic idea is surprisingly simple.
Normally, when you use an AI tool to help with a website, you may have to explain the site’s context before asking it to do useful work.
For example:
Write in a knowledgeable but approachable tone. Avoid exaggerated marketing language. Keep paragraphs short. Explain technical concepts clearly. Use straightforward calls to action. Our primary audience is small-business owners who aren’t necessarily developers.
That instruction might work extremely well.
The problem is that you may have to provide essentially the same context again the next time you work on the site.
Guidelines creates a persistent place for that information.
Rather than keeping important website standards inside one conversation, prompt, document, or person’s memory, the instructions can live with the WordPress.com site.
Supported AI experiences can then reference that context when helping with the website.
The result should be less repetitive prompting and more consistent output.
That becomes increasingly useful as a website grows.
WordPress.com Guidelines at a Glance
| Feature | WordPress.com Guidelines |
|---|---|
| Store site purpose and audience | Yes |
| Store writing and voice preferences | Yes |
| Store image standards | Yes |
| Create block-specific instructions | Yes |
| Add additional team rules | Yes |
| AI-assisted Guideline suggestions | Eligible paid plans |
| Accept, edit, or dismiss suggestions | Yes |
| Export Guidelines | Yes |
| Import Guidelines | Yes |
| Revision history | Yes |
| Automatically supported by every AI tool | No |
| Part of WordPress Core | No |
One particularly important distinction is that Guidelines is the stored context itself.
The WordPress Agent is one tool that can consume that context.
They are related, but they are not the same product.
What Can You Add to WordPress.com Guidelines?
WordPress.com divides Guidelines into several areas so administrators can move beyond one giant generic AI prompt.
This is where the system becomes especially useful.
Site Guidelines
Site Guidelines establish the broader context of the website.
These could explain:
- what the organization does
- who the website serves
- its primary objectives
- important brand terminology
- the type of experience visitors should have
- subjects or priorities that deserve particular emphasis
Imagine a local service company.
Its Site Guidelines might explain that it serves a particular geographic region, focuses on residential customers, prefers straightforward language, and wants visitors to quickly understand how to request service.
An AI tool now has considerably more context than it would get from looking at one isolated page.
Copy Guidelines
Copy Guidelines establish how written content should sound.
For example:
- Use a knowledgeable but conversational voice.
- Keep paragraphs relatively short.
- Avoid unnecessary corporate jargon.
- Use sentence case for headings.
- Explain technical concepts for nontechnical readers.
- Avoid exaggerated claims such as “revolutionary” or “best ever.”
- Prefer practical examples when explaining unfamiliar concepts.
This is probably one of the most immediately useful parts of Guidelines.
As a website grows, keeping its voice consistent becomes harder.
That problem gets even larger when multiple employees, freelancers, agencies, or AI tools contribute content.
Copy Guidelines creates a central reference point.
Image Guidelines
Guidelines can also establish standards for visual content.
A business might specify:
- use natural-looking photography
- avoid obvious stock imagery
- favor simple compositions
- maintain a consistent visual style
- use landscape images for article headers
- make images appropriate for professional audiences
- consider accessibility when adding image content
That allows visual identity and written identity to begin sharing the same website-level context.
For businesses using AI-generated imagery, this could become especially valuable.
Instead of rebuilding the visual direction from scratch each time, compatible AI tools can reference established image preferences.
Block Guidelines
Block Guidelines are particularly interesting because they make the system more specific to WordPress.
Rather than giving AI only broad brand instructions, administrators can establish preferences for individual types of blocks.
For example:
Heading blocks
Use concise headings written in sentence case.
Button blocks
Keep labels short and action-oriented.
Image blocks
Use descriptive alternative text and avoid unnecessarily decorative imagery.
Paragraph blocks
Keep paragraphs readable and avoid large walls of text.
This means Guidelines can potentially influence not just what a website says, but how different components of the site should be handled.
Additional Guidelines
Some rules won’t fit neatly into site, copy, image, or block categories.
Additional Guidelines provides space for broader standards.
These might include:
- terminology that should always be used
- terminology that should be avoided
- accessibility expectations
- legal or compliance reminders
- editorial policies
- internal workflow instructions
- formatting conventions
- company-specific rules
Taken together, these sections begin to resemble a lightweight operating manual for the website.
How to Set Up WordPress.com Guidelines
The setup process is designed to be relatively straightforward.
From your WordPress.com dashboard:
- Open Settings.
- Select Guidelines.
- Choose the area you want to configure.
- Add your instructions.
- Review the Guidelines.
- Save the standards you want the site to retain.
On eligible paid plans, WordPress.com can also analyze existing site content and suggest Guidelines.
You don’t have to accept everything it produces.
Administrators can review individual suggestions and accept, dismiss, or edit them before saving.
That control is important.
AI is helping identify patterns in the existing site, but the website owner still determines which patterns should become actual standards.
Start with a few important rules
I wouldn’t try to document every conceivable website preference on the first day.
Start with the highest-value context.
For many businesses, that means:
Site purpose
Who are you helping, and what should the website accomplish?
Audience
Who are you actually speaking to?
Voice
How should the company sound?
Content priorities
What should pages emphasize?
Image direction
What visual style actually fits the business?
Once those foundations are established, you can make the Guidelines more specific over time.
How WordPress.com Can Generate Guidelines With AI
One of the most useful features is the ability to create an initial draft from an existing site.
On eligible paid plans, WordPress.com AI can examine site content and suggest potential Guidelines.
That can be particularly useful for an established website.
The site may already have a recognizable voice, formatting pattern, or visual identity even if the owner has never formally documented it.
AI can help surface those patterns.
The administrator can then decide which suggestions actually represent the brand.
Every suggestion can be:
Accepted
Keep the suggestion.
Edited
Keep the idea but refine the wording.
Dismissed
Exclude it entirely.
The partner documentation makes a point of emphasizing this user control. AI-generated Guidelines aren’t intended to silently determine how the website operates.
Are WordPress.com Guidelines Free?
There are two things to distinguish here.
The Guidelines interface is being made available across WordPress.com sites as an early-release feature.
However, AI-generated Guideline suggestions require an eligible paid plan. Free sites are shown an upgrade path for that functionality.
The WordPress.com affiliate communication specifically identifies Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce as paid plans supporting the feature.
That doesn’t mean you need AI to manually write a useful set of Guidelines.
You can still define the standards yourself.
The paid-plan distinction primarily matters when you want WordPress.com AI to examine your site and help create the initial suggestions.
How Guidelines Work With the WordPress Agent
This distinction is worth understanding because the two names can easily become mixed together.
Guidelines is the memory.
WordPress Agent is one consumer of that memory.
Guidelines stores information about how the site should be handled.
A compatible AI experience can then use those instructions as additional context when performing supported work.
That means you shouldn’t think of Guidelines as another chatbot or AI assistant.
It’s closer to a persistent context layer.
The AI tool may change.
The task may change.
The Guidelines remain attached to the site.
That’s arguably the more important idea.
Can You Export WordPress.com Guidelines?
Yes.
Administrators can export their Guidelines as a JSON file.
Guidelines can also be imported to replace the current set, and WordPress.com provides revision history so administrators can restore earlier versions.
This may sound like a small administrative feature, but it could become very useful.
For agencies
An agency could create a strong baseline framework covering:
- accessibility
- writing standards
- image standards
- page formatting
- calls to action
- common block behavior
That framework could then be adapted for individual clients.
For businesses
A business can preserve its website standards even when the people managing the site change.
For evolving brands
Revision history means Guidelines don’t have to become permanent rules.
If your positioning changes, your Guidelines can change too.
That’s how a useful brand system should work.
WordPress.com Guidelines vs. ChatGPT Instructions
This is where Guidelines becomes particularly interesting.
You can already give ChatGPT or another standalone AI assistant extensive information about your business.
So why put instructions inside WordPress.com too?
Because the two systems solve somewhat different problems.
| Standalone AI instructions | WordPress.com Guidelines |
|---|---|
| Can support many different types of work | Focused specifically on the website |
| Context may live in a conversation, project, or AI workspace | Context lives with the WordPress.com site |
| Excellent for research and broader strategy | Excellent for persistent site standards |
| Often centered around an individual’s workflow | Can provide common context for collaborators |
| Website context may need to be transferred manually | Compatible site tools can access stored context |
| Useful well beyond WordPress | Closely integrated with the WordPress.com environment |
I don’t think this needs to be an either-or decision.
In fact, a combination may be more powerful.
You might use a standalone AI environment for:
- business strategy
- keyword research
- content planning
- competitive analysis
- brainstorming
- complex reasoning
Then use WordPress.com Guidelines to retain the specific rules governing how that strategy should appear on the website.
One system helps you think.
The other helps the site remember.
Why Guidelines Could Be Valuable for Small Businesses
Small businesses frequently have detailed brand standards without realizing it.
The owner simply knows what feels right.
They know:
- which services matter most
- which customers they’re trying to attract
- what tone sounds natural
- which words don’t sound like the company
- what kinds of images fit
- which offers deserve the most emphasis
- how aggressively they want to market themselves
The problem begins when someone else starts working on the site.
A freelancer might not know those things.
A new employee won’t know them.
An AI assistant certainly won’t know them automatically.
Guidelines provides a place to turn some of that implicit knowledge into explicit instructions.
That could make AI-assisted website management much more practical for people who have no interest in becoming expert prompt engineers.
Why Agencies and Freelancers May Benefit Even More
The potential becomes even clearer for agencies.
Every client website develops its own internal logic.
You learn:
This client doesn’t like that phrase.
This is their most profitable service.
Those photos fit the brand; these don’t.
These pages should be educational rather than sales-heavy.
Buttons should always use a particular style of wording.
The audience isn’t technical, so avoid unnecessary terminology.
Without documentation, much of that knowledge lives in the person who built the website.
That’s fragile.
A strong set of Guidelines creates another layer of documentation attached directly to the project.
That could improve:
- client handoffs
- collaboration
- consistency
- future redesigns
- AI-assisted editing
- long-term website maintenance
For agencies managing many sites, that starts becoming operationally meaningful.
The Bigger Idea: Websites Are Starting to Carry Their Own Context
Guidelines looks like a settings feature.
The underlying idea is considerably larger.
Historically, a website stores things like:
- pages
- posts
- images
- menus
- products
- settings
- users
But the reasoning behind those things generally exists somewhere else.
Why does this business use a certain phrase?
Why are its articles formatted this way?
Who is the site really written for?
Why doesn’t the company use a particular marketing claim?
What should an image look like before it’s published?
That knowledge may live inside:
- someone’s head
- a style guide
- an old email
- an agency document
- a ChatGPT conversation
- nowhere at all
Guidelines introduces the possibility of storing more of that operational knowledge with the website itself.
If AI becomes increasingly involved in maintaining websites, persistent context may eventually become just as important as the AI model performing the task.
An extraordinarily capable AI tool still produces mediocre work when it doesn’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish.
What WordPress.com Guidelines Does Not Do
Because Guidelines is an early-release feature, it’s important not to overstate what it currently does.
WordPress.com’s partner documentation specifically warns against several claims.
Guidelines does not mean every AI tool supports it
Only compatible AI experiences can use the stored context.
You shouldn’t assume every AI feature automatically references every Guideline.
Guidelines is not coming to WordPress Core based on this announcement
WordPress.com and WordPress.org should not be treated as interchangeable here.
This feature is being discussed specifically in the context of the hosted WordPress.com service.
Guidelines doesn’t remove human control
The purpose is to give AI better context.
It isn’t supposed to eliminate review or decision-making.
Users can edit Guidelines and review AI-generated suggestions.
AI-generated Guidelines aren’t free
The AI-assisted suggestion feature requires an eligible paid WordPress.com plan.
Guidelines isn’t an inflexible rules engine
WordPress.com describes Guidelines as editable context rather than hard restrictions.
You can change them as your business changes.
Are WordPress.com Guidelines Worth Using?
For most people already using AI to manage a WordPress.com website, yes.
The feature solves a genuine problem.
Repeating context is inefficient.
More importantly, inconsistent context creates inconsistent output.
If you’re maintaining a tiny personal site that changes once every few years, the benefit may be limited.
But Guidelines becomes much more interesting for:
- business websites
- active blogs
- ecommerce stores
- publications
- multi-author sites
- agency-managed websites
- sites regularly using AI
- websites expected to evolve over several years
The real advantage isn’t that Guidelines makes AI magically understand your company.
It gives you a persistent place to teach the website what matters.
That’s a much more realistic—and potentially more valuable—use of AI.
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress.com Guidelines
What are WordPress.com Guidelines?
WordPress.com Guidelines are persistent instructions stored with a WordPress.com website. They can describe the site’s purpose, audience, writing voice, image preferences, block standards, formatting, and other rules that compatible AI tools can reference.
Where do I find Guidelines in WordPress.com?
WordPress.com site administrators can access Guidelines from Settings → Guidelines.
Do WordPress.com Guidelines work with the WordPress Agent?
Yes. WordPress.com’s partner documentation describes Guidelines as the stored memory and site standards, while WordPress Agent is one consumer of that context.
Are WordPress.com Guidelines free?
The Guidelines interface is available across WordPress.com sites as an early-release feature, but AI-generated Guideline suggestions require an eligible paid plan.
Which WordPress.com plans support AI-generated Guidelines?
The WordPress.com affiliate communication identifies the paid Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce plans as supporting the feature.
Can WordPress.com automatically create Guidelines?
On eligible paid plans, AI can examine existing site content and suggest Guidelines. Administrators can accept, edit, or dismiss suggestions before saving them.
Can I change my Guidelines later?
Yes. Guidelines are editable and are intended to evolve as your website, brand, visual identity, or content strategy changes.
Can I export WordPress.com Guidelines?
Yes. Administrators can export Guidelines, import a set of Guidelines to replace the current version, and use revision history to restore earlier versions.
Do all AI tools automatically follow WordPress.com Guidelines?
No. Guidelines can provide context to compatible AI features. WordPress.com specifically cautions against implying that every AI tool or surface supports Guidelines today.
Are WordPress.com Guidelines part of WordPress Core?
No. WordPress.com’s partner documentation specifically says not to describe Guidelines as coming to WordPress Core. The feature covered here applies to WordPress.com.
Final Verdict: A Small Feature With a Bigger Implication
WordPress.com Guidelines may initially look like another AI setting.
I think the underlying concept matters considerably more.
Most AI workflows still follow something like:
Explain → Generate → Leave → Explain again
Guidelines moves closer to:
Define → Remember → Create → Refine
For website owners, that could mean less repetitive prompting.
For businesses, it could improve brand consistency.
For agencies, it could make client knowledge easier to document and transfer.
And for WordPress.com, Guidelines adds an important piece to a broader AI-assisted website environment: persistent site context.
The best AI website assistant won’t simply be the one capable of doing the most things.
It will need to understand what this particular website is trying to accomplish and how its owner wants those things done.
Guidelines is an early attempt to make that understanding part of the website itself.
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