Offbeat Japan is my travel site about the hidden side of Japan: three languages, 70,000+ readers a month, 750+ articles and 7,000+ photos, all mine. I write every article myself, in French. Everything around the writing runs on our own plugins, with an AI agent working inside WordPress through MCP. Here is the whole setup, honestly.
In 30 seconds
- One WordPress site in English, French and Japanese: 750+ articles and 7,000+ photos.
- A chatbot built with AI Engine answers “what’s on this weekend?” from a database of 2,023 events.
- I write in French; my agent translates into English and Japanese, and works on the site through AI Engine’s MCP server. I use Claude Code, but Claude or ChatGPT work the same way.
- My photos go from Lightroom to WordPress with WP/LR Sync and Photo Engine.
- In 12 months, the site went from 13,500 to 73,600 visitors a month, more than five times.
- 19 plugins in total, 12 of them ours. I recently removed a few, including a backup service that held my site’s keys.
I write, my agent does the rest
For years, I did everything on this site by hand: writing, translating, resizing photos, building galleries, fixing SEO, cleaning up. Little by little, I changed the way I work. And since I use my own plugins every day, every time something annoys me, it gets fixed, for me and for everyone using them.
Today, I write every post myself, in French. That part stays mine. Everything around it is done with my agent, starting with the translations into English and Japanese. While I travel, I talk to it to keep notes. Back home, it copies those notes into the draft, prepares the photos, places them in the article and builds the galleries.
The bridge is AI Engine‘s MCP server. MCP is the standard way for an AI assistant to use tools, and AI Engine turns WordPress into one: posts, media, galleries, SEO, and our other plugins too. Personally, I use Claude Code in my terminal, connected straight to the site, with no relay and no extra service in between. But it isn’t tied to Claude Code: Claude (on the web or the desktop app) and ChatGPT connect to the same server and can do the same work.
In practice, I ask in plain words: “put my notes from this trip into the draft”, “add the five best photos from this shoot after the second paragraph”, “check what Media Cleaner would delete”. The agent does it, and every change lands in WordPress, where I can see it and undo it.
Want to try it on your own site? AI Engine’s MCP server is free. In Claude, add “AI Engine for WordPress” from the connector directory, type your site address, approve.
One site, three languages
Offbeat Japan started in French as Japon Secret, then came English and Japanese. It’s a single WordPress install with Polylang. I write in French, and my agent translates each article into English and Japanese; I check the result before it goes out. It’s also where I try every Meow Apps plugin before you get it: if something annoys me there, it gets fixed before it reaches your site.
A chatbot that knows what’s on this weekend
Travelers always ask the same thing: what’s happening while I’m there? So the chatbot on the site, built with AI Engine, looks it up in a database of 2,023 events for the next 12 months (festivals, fireworks, illuminations) and answers in English, French or Japanese.
The trick is one small function, offbeat_find_events, that the chatbot is allowed to call. Mine lives in my theme, but you don’t need a theme or a developer for this: Code Engine does exactly that. You write a small PHP function (or ask the AI to write it), and it appears in the chatbot’s Functions setting, ready to switch on. Your chatbot can then answer from your own data: events, stock, opening hours, anything.
And I didn’t write it myself. I described what I wanted to my agent, and through MCP it wrote the function and switched it on in the chatbot.
SEO, handled by my agent with SEO Engine
SEO Engine does a lot: it scores every post, suggests better titles and descriptions with AI, adds schema, handles redirects, shows which AI bots visit the site, and brings Search Console right into WordPress, all in an interface I really enjoy. But since it works with MCP, I mostly let my agent handle it. It reads the numbers, finds what needs work, and fixes it in the three languages. I keep the final word.
In the 30 days to October 31: 28,277 visits from AI bots (Googlebot, bingbot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot…), and 735k impressions on Google for 18k clicks. That’s how I choose which guides to improve next, instead of guessing.
The last 12 months
Around May 2026, I connected SEO Engine to Search Console and started working on the site through AI Engine’s MCP server. Here is the site over the past year, all three languages together.
Visitors a month, all three languages
before since May 2026: SEO Engine + AI Engine over MCP
October to October, the site went from 13,500 to 73,600 visitors a month: more than five times. Google clicks tripled since May, from about 475 a day to more than 1,500. Even without the August peak, the curve keeps climbing.
I’m convinced SEO Engine and AI Engine did a lot of this together. Through MCP, my agent uses SEO Engine’s tools directly: it reads Search Console, spots what needs work, and fixes it in the three languages. Today, 300+ articles have a proper search description, and the site’s average SEO score is 81 out of 100. I still write every article; the tools make sure each one gets found.
7,000+ photos, and a site that stays clean
With three languages and years of articles, the media library grows fast, and on Kinsta, going over your disk space means paying extra every month. Media Cleaner keeps track of 65,020 references to know what’s really used, and my agent runs it through MCP. Unused files go, and the site stays under the limit: no extra fee. On the last full audit, only two files were flagged by mistake (two Instagram images set in the theme’s Customizer). Database Cleaner takes care of the database regularly.
From Lightroom to the article: WP/LR Sync and Photo Engine
Every photo is mine and lives in Lightroom. I never upload them by hand. WP/LR Sync, the Lightroom side, publishes my collections to WordPress, and Photo Engine, the WordPress side, keeps them in sync: if I re-edit a photo in Lightroom, the version on the site follows, in every article that uses it.
Once the photos are in WordPress, my agent picks them for the article, Meow Gallery lays them out, and Meow Lightbox opens them full size, with the camera and lens underneath (you can see both in the screenshots above).
Everything it uses
19 plugins: 12 of ours, 6 from others, and one small private plugin of mine.
- Meow Apps: AI Engine Pro, SEO Engine Pro, Media Cleaner Pro, Database Cleaner Pro, Media File Renamer Pro, Perfect Images Pro, Meow Gallery Pro, Meow Lightbox Pro, Photo Engine (with WP/LR Sync in Lightroom), Social Engine Pro, Meow Mailer and Meow Workflow Pro.
- The rest: Polylang Pro and Polylang for WooCommerce for the three languages, MailPoet and MailPoet Premium for the French newsletter, and WooCommerce with Stripe for a small book shop.
- Around it: a custom theme, Kinsta hosting with its daily backups, and Plausible for analytics, self-hosted.
Recently, I also removed a few. My 11 Code Snippets moved into the theme, so they live in git with the rest of the code. BlogVault left, because I don’t want another service holding my site’s keys. The one paid WooCommerce extension I rarely use, I folded into my theme (it’s GPL) instead of paying a yearly subscription. Four small plugins I simply didn’t need anymore went too. Fewer plugins, fewer surprises.
What I’d tell you
You don’t need a big team to run a big site anymore. Keep the part you love (for me, writing) and let good tools and an agent carry the rest, with everything staying in WordPress where you can check it. Have a look at Offbeat Japan, and if you have questions about any part of this setup, write to me.
