How to use Quillo

Quillo is a Substack publishing studio. The typical first-run looks like this:

1. 1Create your account and start the 3-day free trial.
2. 2Connect your Substack publication and keep your session fresh.
3. 3Add your own AI provider key (or write manually).
4. 4Draft in the AI Composer, review in Drafts, then push to Substack.

Build a Substack subscribe form in the Studio, style it with a live preview, then paste the snippet on any web page — or use the WordPress shortcode if you have the Quillo plugin installed.

Step 1 — Create the embed and pick a template

Open Studio → Embeds, create a new embed and choose Form. Start from one of the presets (Minimal Light, Bold Dark, Editorial Serif, Brutalist Pop, Aurora Glass, Noir & Gold, and more). A template just fills in colors, fonts and radius — you can change every value afterwards.

Step 2 — Basics

• Name — internal label so you can find this embed later.
• Substack publication URL — where subscribers are sent, e.g. https://yourname.substack.com.
• Layout — Inline, Card or Minimal.
• Active — turn this on to serve the form. An inactive embed stops rendering on your site.

Step 3 — Copy (the words people read)

Set the heading, description, button label, email placeholder and the success message shown after someone subscribes. Pick the text alignment (left, center, right) with the three alignment buttons.

Step 4 — Typography, surface and button colors

• Typography — choose the font family (system, sans, serif options such as Cormorant Garamond).
• Surface — background, text, border and accent (focus ring) colors, plus corner radius. Use Per-corner if you want different radii on each corner.
• Button — button background, button text and hover background.
• Each color field has Presets and, where it makes sense, Gradient helpers — so a background or button can be a CSS gradient, not just a flat hex.

Step 5 — How the form appears

Under Display, choose one of four behaviours:

• Inline — sits in the page where you paste it.
• Inline after a delay — appears in place after a few seconds.
• Popup modal — timed — opens after your chosen delay.
• Popup modal — on exit intent — opens when the visitor moves to leave the page.

Pick a popup design template (Centered Card, Slide-in Corner, Bottom Banner, Exit Rescue, Editorial Morning, Studio Split, and more). Each template is a starting point; the options you get next depend on what you selected.

For popups you can then fine-tune: exit-intent sensitivity, how often it shows again, position (center, bottom-right slide-in, bottom banner), backdrop color and opacity, close on backdrop click, close on Esc, what happens after a visitor dismisses it, and an optional image or logo with alt text, position and size.

Step 6 — Lead magnet: deliver a file or link

Turn on Show a download / reward after success to build a lead-gen form: the visitor gives their email, gets subscribed to your Substack, and then sees your reward. Set the reward title, an optional description, the button label and the file or link URL.

Host the file wherever you like (Google Drive, Dropbox, your own site) — Quillo shows the link after a successful subscribe.

Step 7 — Spam protection

• A honeypot field is always included and invisible to humans — nothing to configure.
• Email validation is on by default; you can reword the invalid-email message.
• Optional: paste a Cloudflare Turnstile site key for stronger bot protection. The site key is public and safe to embed. Leave it empty to disable.

Step 8 — Install it on your site

Scroll to Install snippet and press Copy. It is self-contained HTML — no external scripts — so you can paste it into any page, template or block editor. You can also grab it any time from the embeds list with the Get code button.

Want to show your latest Substack posts instead of a form? See Embed a newsfeed below.

A newsfeed embed shows your latest Substack posts on your own site — styled to match your brand, with a live preview while you build it.

Step 1 — Name, publication URL and Style

• Embed name — internal label so you can find it later.
• Publication URL — e.g. https://yourname.substack.com. Posts are fetched from here.
• Theme template — Light, Dark, Paper, Midnight, Sepia, Mint, Indigo, Rose, Brutalist, Glass, Magazine, or Custom for your own colors, radius and font.
• Card style — Bordered, Shadow, Ghost or Flat.
• Alignment — left, center or right text.
• Fields to show — image, subtitle, author, premium badge, date, reactions and comments. An orange-marked toggle means that field is visible; the preview updates instantly, so you never have to guess.
• Use the desktop / mobile buttons above the preview to check both widths, and the Active switch + Save at the top right when you are done.

Step 2 — Posts: fetch, choose and reorder

Open the Posts panel and pull posts in one of two ways:

• Connected — fetch from the Substack publication you connected in Quillo.
• From URL — fetch from the publication URL you typed above, no connection needed.

Tick posts in Available to add them, press Remove to take one out, and use the arrows in Selected to reorder — the first post becomes the hero in layouts that have one. Up to 25 posts can be selected.

Step 3 — Layout (5 styles)

• Cards — image + text, one per row.
• Compact — a tight title list.
• Grid — 2-up, uniform tiles.
• Magazine — big hero post plus a grid.
• Masonry — Pinterest-style staggered columns.

Click through them and keep whichever reads best in the preview.

Step 4 — Behavior

• Open links in new tab — keep visitors on your page.
• Show header — add a heading above the feed, e.g. “Latest posts from Brian Jackson”.
• Show footer button — a call-to-action such as “View all posts” pointing at your Substack URL.

Step 5 — Embed code

Open Embed code and pick whichever fits your site — you only need one.

Change anything later and press Save — the live embed updates. No need to re-paste the snippet.

Quillo needs your publication URL and a valid Substack session to publish drafts.

How to copy your substack.sid cookie

1. Log into Substack in the same browser you use with Quillo.
2. Open the Substack tab and press F12 on your keyboard, or right-click anywhere on the page and choose Inspect. This opens Chrome DevTools.
3. In DevTools, click the Application tab at the top.
4. In the left sidebar, expand Cookies, then click https://substack.com.
5. Find the row named substack.sid in the table, then copy its value.
6. Go back to Quillo, open Settings → Substack, paste the value into the substack.sid cookie field, check the ownership box, and click Connect Substack.

The extension keeps your Substack session fresh and lets you save any web page to your Quillo Library with one click.

• Auto-refreshes your Substack session so publishing does not fail mid-draft.
• One-click save of any article or page to your Library for later newsletter use.

Quillo does not bill you for AI usage. You add your own provider key and we call the provider directly. Keys are encrypted server-side.

The plugin pulls your WordPress posts into Quillo. You then edit and publish them from Quillo — there is no direct posting from WordPress to Substack.

Step 1 — Install the plugin

Step 2 — Connect (recommended: one-click)

1. In WordPress admin, open Settings → Quillo.
2. Click Connect to Quillo. WordPress creates an application password for Quillo automatically.
3. WordPress asks you to authorise the connection — approve it.
4. You are redirected back to Quillo, where you click Allow to finish linking the site.
5. Your site now appears in WordPress → Your posts.

If you land on “Site connected — one last step”

Some hosts strip the return address WordPress sends us, so we can't hand the token back automatically. Your site is already connected — do not start over. Click Copy & open WordPress settings, then in Settings → Quillo → Have a token already? paste the token and click Connect. The plugin card then turns green with your plan and last sync.

Requires WordPress 5.6+ with Application Passwords enabled (default) and HTTPS.

Step 2 (alternative) — Connect manually

Use this if the one-click flow is blocked by your host or security plugin.

1. In Quillo, open Settings → Browser extension and generate a token, then copy it.
2. In WordPress, go to Settings → Quillo, click Have a token already?, paste the token and click Connect.
3. In WordPress, go to Users → Profile of a user with the Administrator role, scroll to Application Passwords, create one named “Quillo”, and copy the generated password.
4. Back in Quillo, open Settings → WordPress sites and fill in the Site URL, an optional label, the WordPress username and that Application Password, then click Connect site.

Step 3 — Pull posts into Quillo

1. Open WordPress → Your posts and pick your site in the left column.
2. Search if you have many posts.
3. Click Import as draft to pull a post into Quillo — one by one, or as many as you like.
4. Use View to open the original post on your site first if you want to check it.

Step 4 — Edit and publish from Quillo

Step 5 — Auto-send new posts (optional)

Shortcodes — embed your forms and newsfeed