# Best Practices

## Recommended setup

<table data-card-size="large" data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Use an Administrator Application Password</strong></td><td>Create a dedicated Application Password under an Administrator account so Coupler.io can access all post statuses, private pages, and user data. A lower-privilege account will silently exclude content you might expect to see.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Join Posts with Categories and Users</strong></td><td>Posts alone only give you category and author IDs. Add Categories, Tags, and Users as additional sources in your data flow and use the Join transformation to get human-readable names alongside your post data.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Use Append mode for comment tracking</strong></td><td>If you're monitoring comments over time, set your data flow to Append mode so new comments accumulate in your destination rather than replacing the previous snapshot.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Data refresh and scheduling

<table data-card-size="large" data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Match refresh frequency to publish cadence</strong></td><td>If your site publishes a few posts per week, a daily refresh is more than enough. High-volume news sites may benefit from hourly refreshes for the Posts entity.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Use date filters for large comment volumes</strong></td><td>For sites with thousands of comments, set a start date on the Comments entity to limit how far back Coupler.io looks. This keeps refresh times short and your destination focused on recent engagement.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Performance optimization

<table data-card-size="large" data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Split entities across separate data flows</strong></td><td>If you need Posts for one team and Media for another, create separate data flows rather than combining everything. This makes troubleshooting easier and keeps each destination clean.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Send content to AI for analysis</strong></td><td>Export your Posts entity to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to automate SEO audits, generate meta descriptions, or classify posts by topic — without touching your live WordPress site.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Common pitfalls

{% hint style="danger" %}
If your site uses Cloudflare, its bot protection can block Coupler.io from reaching the WordPress REST API. You'll get a "non-JSON response" error. Check your Cloudflare firewall rules and add an exception for the `/wp-json/` path before spending time debugging elsewhere.
{% endhint %}

{% columns %}
{% column %}
**Do**

* Use an Application Password, not your WordPress login password
* Verify your site URL is publicly accessible before connecting
* Join Posts + Users + Categories for complete reporting datasets
* Test with a manual run before scheduling
  {% endcolumn %}

{% column %}
**Don't**

* Use a Subscriber or Contributor account for the API connection — you'll miss private content
* Rely on the start date filter for Posts — it only works for Pages, Comments, Media, and Editor blocks
* Store sensitive site credentials in shared spreadsheets alongside your exported data
  {% endcolumn %}
  {% endcolumns %}