API Keys

Contents

• Getting Your Key
• Finding Your Key
• Changing the API Key Used for Stats

Related

• Adding Users
• Change Your Username
• Deleting Accounts
• E-mail Address
• Passwords
• User Profile
• User Roles

Getting Your Key

To obtain an API key, you simply need to register for a WordPress.com account at http://www.wordpress.com/signup

Note: If you are privately hosting an installation of WordPress, you still must register a WordPress.com account in order to obtain an API key.

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Finding Your Key

Every user of WordPress.com receives a unique API key they can use to access a number of services. This key should be kept as secret as your password — do NOT share it with anybody.

To find your key, access your WordPress.com user profile at http://dashboard.wordpress.com/wp-admin/profile.php -  you should see, directly under the Profile heading, a sentence which explains, “Your WordPress.com API key is:” followed by a string of 12 letters and numbers.

There you have it! If your API key appears to be missing from your User Profile, please contact support to have one generated for you.

If you have a blog hosted elsewhere using the WordPress.org software, you can use the API key to activate certain plugins, including Akismet and WordPress.com Stats.

You must have an account registered here at WordPress.com to receive an API key. If you have installed the WordPress.org software on a privately-hosted server, this does NOT give you an API key.

You can sign up for a WordPress.com account and API key from http://www.wordpress.com/signup

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Changing the API Key Used for Stats

You can change the API key used for the WordPress.com Stats plugin on your externally-hosted blog via the following steps:

For these instructions, the API key used for stats belongs to WordPress.com username statsapi1 and we will change to the API key owned by WordPress.com username statsapi2. Instead of these usernames, you would need to use the usernames of your accounts.

1) Log into WordPress.com with username statsapi1.

2) Click My Account in the admin bar and select Stats from the drop-down menu.

3) If the account has access to stats for several blogs, make sure you are viewing stats for the blog you want to modify (select it from the drop-down box available there).

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter the email address associated with username statsapi2.Click the Add button.

5) Make the user statsapi2 a stats Administrator by clicking the Promote button.

6) Remove statsapi1 from having stats access by clicking the Leave this blog button.

7) Log into your externally-hosted blog’s dashboard and access your Plugins panel. Deactivate and activate the WordPress.com Stats plugin; you will be prompted with a warning.

8) Click on the WordPress.com Stats link to go to the configuration page. Enter the API Key for the user statsapi2 and click the Save button.

9) You have successfully changed the API key!

Note: If you receive an error message, please contact WordPress.com Support.

Last modified: February 24, 2009