WordPress - Document Frontmatter

Document Frontmatter lets you define WordPress post metadata directly inside your Google Doc — no need to fill in forms each time you export. Add a simple 2-column table at the top of your document, set the values you want, and Tenwrite picks them up automatically.

This is especially useful with Drive Automation and Sheet Automation, where there’s no export form at all. Frontmatter is how you control individual posts when publishing is fully automated. It also works with manual exports.

You don’t need to create the table by hand. Open your Google Doc, go to Extensions > Tenwrite > Frontmatter > Insert WordPress Frontmatter, and a ready-to-use table is inserted at the top of your document. Fill in what you need and leave the rest blank — empty rows are ignored.

When Tenwrite processes the document, it reads the table, applies the values to the post, and removes the table from the published content. Your readers never see it.

If your self-hosted WordPress site has the Tenwrite plugin installed, the same frontmatter table can also control supported SEO fields.

Add any of these rows when you want the Google Doc to control SEO during export or sync:

If one of these SEO fields is present in frontmatter, Tenwrite treats that field as controlled by the Google Doc during export and sync.

That means:

• the matching field is locked in Tenwrite
• you update or remove it in the Google Doc instead
• after changing the document, run Sync Post to push the update to WordPress

For text SEO fields, an empty value means Tenwrite treats that field as not set, so you can still edit it in the app.

For no_index and no_follow, an explicit true or false value counts as set.

Set status to one of: draft, publish, future, private, or pending. For scheduling, set status to future and add a publish_date.

To save as a draft while you’re still working on content:

To schedule a post, set status to future and add a publish_date:

You can also add these fields to control how Tenwrite transforms the document’s HTML during export:

• remove_inline_styles — true/false
• remove_font_family — true/false
• remove_font_size — true/false
• remove_color — true/false
• remove_text_decoration — true/false
• remove_background — true/false
• remove_padding — true/false
• remove_margin — true/false
• remove_width — true/false
• remove_height — true/false
• remove_line_height — true/false
• remove_border — true/false
• remove_letter_spacing — true/false
• remove_text_transform — true/false
• remove_max_width — true/false
• remove_max_height — true/false
• demote_headings — true/false
• add_rel_nofollow_to_links — true/false
• add_target_blank_to_links — true/false
• increase_line_height — true/false
• convert_pt_to_px — true/false
• strip_empty_elements — true/false
• responsive_images — true/false
• embed_youtube — true/false
• embed_twitter — true/false
• upload_images_to_media_library — true/false
• use_first_image_as_featured_image — true/false

• The table must be the very first element in the document — nothing before it.
• Use Extensions > Tenwrite > Frontmatter to insert a correctly formatted table.
• Don’t edit the first row (tenwrite_frontmatter : v1) — only change values in the second column.

• Set status to future and include a publish_date in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM format.
• Make sure the date is in the future when you export.

• Use comma-separated format: category1, category2.
• Double-check the field names: categories and tags (not category or tag).

• Use comment and ping in frontmatter, not comment_status or ping_status.

• Export Google Docs to WordPress
• WordPress Plugin
• Use SEO Fields with the Tenwrite Plugin
• Sync Post
• WordPress - Drive Automation
• WordPress - Sheet Automation

For help with frontmatter setup, contact support@tenwrite.com.