n8n Workflow: Audit Stale WordPress Posts & Gmail Digests

Keep your WordPress content fresh—automatically

This n8n workflow scans your WordPress site for posts that haven’t been updated for a configured number of months, ranks them by refresh priority, generates an HTML digest, and can optionally email the report via Gmail.

What this workflow does

Designed for monthly review (or on-demand runs), it:

• Schedules automatically: runs on the first day of every month at 09:00, or you can start it manually.
• Reads your configuration: pulls values like siteUrl (no trailing slash), staleAfterMonths, postsToScan, maxRowsInReport, and email settings.
• Fetches stale posts via the WordPress REST API: requests published posts with a last modified date older than your cutoff.
• Scores refresh priority: strips HTML to count words, detects mentions of older years, then assigns High / Medium / Low priority based on age and year mentions.
• Builds a clear report: sorts posts by priority and age, then generates an HTML table digest plus a subject line summarizing the findings.
• Sends (or skips) via Gmail: if stale posts exist and emailReport is enabled, it emails the digest to reportEmail; otherwise it outputs a result indicating the email was skipped.

Use cases

• SaaS operators maintaining a WordPress knowledge base who want a monthly content freshness audit.
• Automation engineers who need an n8n WordPress reporting workflow for backlog management.
• Teams that want an email-based digest to plan updates for outdated posts and year-specific content.

Technical details

• WordPress integration: WordPress REST API using HTTP Basic Auth with a WordPress Application Password.
• Nodes used: if, set, code, http request, gmail (plus a sticky note).
• Output: HTML digest table, summary subject line, and optional Gmail sending.

Setup checklist

• Create a WordPress Application Password and add it to n8n as an HTTP Basic Auth credential for the REST API request.
• Update siteUrl, staleAfterMonths, postsToScan, and maxRowsInReport.
• Optional: configure Gmail credentials, set reportEmail, and set emailReport to true to enable sending.