How to integrate WordPress with ONLYOFFICE Docs on Ubuntu

WordPress is one of the most popular open-source content management systems (CMS) that comes with website building features and has millions of users all over the world. Apart from websites and blogs, WordPress is also used to create and manage other web content, such as forums, learning management systems (LMS), media galleries, etc. Its standard features can be significantly extended with free plugins and themes.

To enable document editing and real-time collaboration, the WordPress platform can be integrated with ONLYOFFICE Docs via the official integration app developed by the ONLYOFFICE team. ONLYOFFICE Docs is an open-source office package that comes with a free community version and commercial editions for enterprises and software developers.

The ONLYOFFICE online suite consists of web-based editors for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fillable forms. ONLYOFFICE Docs is notable for its perfect compatibility with Open Office XLM formats (DOCX, XLSX and PPTS), so it opens and edits any Word, Excel and PowerPoint files without difficulty.

Due to its open API and WOPI support, ONLYOFFICE Docs easily integrates with multiple sync&share solutions, LMS platforms and electronic document management systems, including Nextcloud, Seafile, Nuxeo, ownCloud, Confluence, Alfresco, Plone, Redmine, Moodle, Chamilo, SharePoint, etc.

In this guide, we will tell you how to integrate WordPress with ONLYOFFICE Docs on Ubuntu to enable real-time document editing and co-authoring within the WordPress platform.

What you’ll learn

This guide describes how to connect ONLYOFFICE Docs to the WordPress platform on Ubuntu using the official integration app that allows WordPress users to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations and add ONLYOFFICE blocks to their posts.

What you’ll need

• WordPress instance
• ONLYOFFICE Docs instance (either Community Edition or Enterprise Edition)
• ONLYOFFICE integration app for WordPress

To be able to deploy and properly configure a WordPress instance on your Ubuntu server, please have a look at this detailed guide. It will help you to go through the installation and configuration process with the least effort.

One of the easiest ways to deploy the latest version of ONLYOFFICE Docs (ONLYOFFICE Document Server) on your Ubuntu server is to get it from GitHub. As an alternative, you can refer to this guide and opt for the most suitable installation way, whether it be Docker or the official Deb package.

When you have running instances of ONLYOFFICE Docs and WordPress, you need to install the official integration application. You can get it either from The WordPress Plugin Directory or from GitHub.

After that, please log into your WordPress platform and go to the WordPress admin dashboard. Follow these simple steps:

• Find the Plugins section
• Click Add New and select Upload Plugin
• Click Choose File and select the zipped archive with the ONLYOFFICE plugin code
• Activate the ONLYOFFICE plugin

Note: the ONLYOFFICE integration app is compatible with WordPress v.5.9.0+.

After installing the official ONLYOFFICE connector, you need to configure it. For this purpose, go to the WordPress admin dashboard, find ONLYOFFICE and open the Settings page. You will see the following parameters that you need to specify:

• URL address of the installed instance of ONLYOFFICE Docs
• JWT secret key

The JWT secret key is needed to protect your documents from unauthorized access. If you want to use this feature, you will need to enable token validation by specifying the same secret key in the ONLYOFFICE Docs configuration file. This can be done in accordance with this guide.

After specifying these parameters, click the Save Settings button.

When you are done with the installation and configuration process, the ONLYOFFICE integration app will allow all WordPress administrators to work with office documents using the ONLYOFFICE online editors.

Basically, here is what you can do with ONLYOFFICE Docs within the WordPress platform:

• Editing office documents uploaded to the platform
• Adding ONLYOFFICE blocks to your blog posts

All uploaded office documents from the WordPress Media gallery will automatically appear on the ONLYOFFICE page that you can access from the admin dashboard.

All WordPress administrators now can edit and collaborate on DOCX documents, XLSX spreadsheets and PPTX presentations using two co-editing modes, the Track Changes feature, comments and a chat for text messages.

When you click on an office file, the corresponding ONLYOFFICE editor will open in the same tab, and you will be able to start the editing process.

Also, when you create a post for your WordPress blog, you can add an ONLYOFFICE block and upload a new office file there or select one from the WordPress Media Library.

This option allows the visitors of your website to view the file in Embedded mode without having to download it.