WP-o-matic install woes

[peter gibson]

Is there anyone here that has time to take me through the proper way to configure wp-o-matic? I have just installed it and I'm having issues with just exactly what a cron job is, where to paste the code, this, that, and the other thing.

Anyone with some wpomatic skills can help?

[DigiTips]

hey pete, what seems to be the problem? In more detail...

[peter gibson]

Well, I seem to have worked out the initial kinks, but when I created a campaign all the posts that landed on my site were poorly formatted and all over my page - so I'm not sure if I have done something wrong here.

[peter gibson]

Ok, I think the poor formatting happened because I fetched too many items from the feed. I set it to fetch 2 posts and now the formatting is ok and looks fine. The only thing is, the items coming in are only 1 paragraph long with no photos. Any idea how I can fix this?

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by peter gibson

Ok, I think the poor formatting happened because I fetched too many items from the feed. I set it to fetch 2 posts and now the formatting is ok and looks fine. The only thing is, the items coming in are only 1 paragraph long with no photos. Any idea how I can fix this?

if that's all they put in the rss feed, that's all you will get.

regarding the formatting: the number fetched should not have any effect on this.. things can get messed up if the feed has html in it that's chopped off and missing closing tags. my guess is that by only fetching 2, you're no longer pulling in the messed up one.

[peter gibson]

Originally Posted by jasonl70

if that's all they put in the rss feed, that's all you will get.

regarding the formatting: the number fetched should not have any effect on this.. things can get messed up if the feed has html in it that's chopped off and missing closing tags. my guess is that by only fetching 2, you're no longer pulling in the messed up one.

I see. OK I'm off to try a feed that I am sure includes entire articles. Will see how it goes.

[Sam Rodrigo]

Hi Peter,

It often depends on the feed --some are just a summary. And a header will usually link back to the original article.

If you suspect the problem is somewhere in the DB, you can install a DB plugin which can 'optimize' the WP DB. I stopped using WP-o-matic, but I recall that there was a admin choice that talked about SUMMARY or FULL ARTICLE. Cannot remember now.

Anyway, worth a look.
Success,
Sam

[Keith Kogane]

What you get in the feed will depend on what the site owner publishes to the feed. If that content's not in there, you won't get it from their feed at all.

I have success posting only snippets, but if you're wanting longer posts, try using something like RSSMagician to make your own RSS feeds out of other sources, then post that to your blogs with WP-O-Matic or YAAB.

I've heard good stuff about RSS to Blog too, but haven't used it.

Personally, I add my own unique content to what the feeds pull using a hacked together system that uses the "Get Random Page" plugin, but that's kind of overly complex and I'm personally looking for a better way to do it.

[peter gibson]

Sam, thanks for the advice. Still tweaking and pulling hair out trying to get it working properly. May I ask why you stopped using wpomatic?

Keith, when you grab the content from a feed there should be photos coming in on my blog as well, yes? I am getting text only so far and yet the original has photos. Any thoughts as to why that would happen?

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by peter gibson

Sam, thanks for the advice. Still tweaking and pulling hair out trying to get it working properly. May I ask why you stopped using wpomatic?

Keith, when you grab the content from a feed there should be photos coming in on my blog as well, yes? I am getting text only so far and yet the original has photos. Any thoughts as to why that would happen?

Just because there's a photo in the post doesn't mean that the image content appears in the feed also. You'd need to click on the RSS link and then view the source and look for the image code.

If it's in the feed and you aren't seeing it, it could just be that WPOM can't interpret the images in that feed. I've started using YAAB instead of WPOM, so maybe try that.

In the past, I've also used a plugin (I can't remember the name) but basically you can upload a huge directory of images, and put a little [image] token in your post and it will randomly insert an image into your post from that directory.

Maybe that will solve your problem?

[Sam Rodrigo]

Originally Posted by peter gibson

Sam, thanks for the advice. Still tweaking and pulling hair out trying to get it working properly. May I ask why you stopped using wpomatic?

Hi Peter,
I used it to put feeds on an investment site --using such sources as PRWeb. The cron jobs were running every 20 min. I had 186,000 articles in about a week. Then the server *fried*. Yes, I was told the server burned in the hosting facility.

All the while, I was looking at traffic and seo results, which also plummeted. I learned a lesson...

Stick to Original Content, perhaps, user generated.
Stay way from redistributing feeds.
DO NOT run concurrent CRON JOBS from the same RSS source. Give each CRON time to finish before another one starts.

You should have no problem with WP-O-Matic. It's an elegant setup.

This all depends on your niche. My effort was large --using a powerful dedicated server. However, in your case, setting up a few articles here and there via feeds will work for you.

I just wanted to share my story. Yes, VENT some 'heat'. I'm done. DO NOT let what happened to me stop your idea. Fly with it, by all means.
AND Success,
Sam

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by Sam Rodrigo

Hi Peter,
I used it to put feeds on an investment site --using such sources as PRWeb. The cron jobs were running every 20 min. I had 186,000 articles in about a week. Then the server *fried*. Yes, I was told the server burned in the hosting facility.

All the while, I was looking at traffic and seo results, which also plummeted. I learned a lesson...

Stick to Original Content, perhaps, user generated.
Stay way from redistributing feeds.
DO NOT run concurrent CRON JOBS from the same RSS source. Give each CRON time to finish before another one starts.

You should have no problem with WP-O-Matic. It's an elegant setup.

This all depends on your niche. My effort was large --using a powerful dedicated server. However, in your case, setting up a few articles here and there via feeds will work for you.

I just wanted to share my story. Yes, VENT some 'heat'. I'm done. DO NOT let what happened to me stop your idea. Fly with it, by all means.
AND Success,
Sam

Yeah, you need to intelligently set up your autoblogging efforts so they operate the same way a real live blogger would. Basically, one post per category, per day, is what I shoot for.

If there's a lot more content than that being generated, make more blogs to re-post the coverage. Don't try to cram it all in one.

Anyway, that's my advice.

I read a while back about an idea called "1000 true fans" where if you get 1000 true fans in any niche, you've got a 6 figure niche as long as you put out $100 worth of product in a year.

The trick for IM'ers is that you don't have to do this in a single niche/channel. It's easy to get 10-100 followers in ANY niche, and it's easy enough to get into niche after niche.

Remember you can either go big in a few niches, or go small in a lot of niches. For the way I work, and for what I find easiest to maintain, I find it easier to target beginners in HUNDREDS of niches than it is to target intermediate people in just a few.

Anyway, my $0.02.

[vicone]

Yeah, you need to intelligently set up your autoblogging efforts so they operate the same way a real live blogger would. Basically, one post per category, per day, is what I shoot for.

Likewise, I set it up for one post per day and that gives me content without making excessive demands on the server or getting complaints from the host.

A few other points:

1. I set up WPOM by NOT ticking the cron job box when it is being set up. The plugin then works with an inbuilt cron facility to make the posts. This simplifies the set up.

2. An easy way to get full articles for WPOM is to get a feed from this directory:

Full Article RSS Feed

Be sure to set your feed for only one article as the default, which is OK for testing, is 10.

Ivan

[kevinw1]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

Personally, I add my own unique content to what the feeds pull using a hacked together system that uses the "Get Random Page" plugin, but that's kind of overly complex and I'm personally looking for a better way to do it.

Aha!

I'd been looking for a way to switch in random chunks of text: in combination with the Page Link Manager plugin WordPress Plugin: Page Link Manager | Garrett Murphey , this lets me do that while hiding the original pages where I put the text.

You always come up with great stuff Keith!

[ahefner33]

Hey everyone. Was looking for some info on setting up wp-o-matic and a cron job. Didn't want to start a whole new thread so I thought I might ask here.

I do not really understand what both the wp-o-matic settings or frequency is for and what the time tables settings for the cron job setup on the server. Say I have set 4-5 feeds in wp-o-matic list and I want those feeds to have 1 post from 1 feed to post every 5 hours.

My question is in the wp-o-matic settings where it asks for frequency to check feeds, would this be where I would put 5 hours? And then how would I design it to pull just 1 post from 1 feed, then after the next 5 hours pull 1 post from a different feed? Then there is a setting in the cron job on my host server (Hostgator) that asks for the times to check. This is where it loses me. If wp-o-matic already has a setting to check the feeds at certain times, then what is the cron job for?

Sorry if this is suppose to be obvious, but I am completely lost on how to perform the above scenario. Thanks for any of the help in advance. You can PM me or post it here. Hope the OP doesn't mind.

Adam

[Chris Lagarde]

Lots of good auto-blogging info in this thread...which means I better save this thread before it gets nuked for some nonsensical reason.

[vicone]

You don't need to set a cron job to use WPOM. UN-tick the box for cron jobs and it will still work.

Also you don't need posts every 5 hours. Once or twice a day is more than adequate.

Be sure to install Maxpress's Ping Optimizer to ensure that you don't do excessive pinging and get banned by the directories.

Ivan

[archer29]

If you're using Firefox, get the Zemanta add on. It sits on the sidebar of the dashboard with thumbnails of images pulled from Wikipedia and other sources as relevant suggestions to your post. All you have to do is click on the picture and it automatically inserts it for you.

[theinfomaven]

I am having issues getting it to work also.

It installs fine but how do I get it to make posts?

Also, how do I automatically get certain affiliate links to show up in my posts?

[vicone]

WP-O-M is fairly easy to use, but it can have a problem if using WP 2.7 as I found it made multiple posts when only a single was required. There is a simple fix for this if others wish more info on that point.

To get WPOM working, first click on the register with author window. This gets it immediately activated.

Then click through the set up procedure in the settings. This is straight forward, just follow the prompts. When doing this I prefer to untick the cron job option and let the plugin do its own thing.

Then click on "Add Campaign" and add the RSS feed that you wish WPOM to draw its content from. For instance, if you want full articles to post, get a feed from here:

Full Article RSS Feed

Then check the various options in the settings for that campaign. I prefer to select 1 article per day if using ArticleSpan, but this a personal preference. The default in WPOM is set to 10 posts per day so I'd suggest reducing that so you don't upset your web host with too much activity hogging the processor.

Be sure to press the "submit" button and you're ready to go. It usually makes an initial fetch so that you can see that the post has been made correctly.

After setting up WPOM, I'd suggest also checking the activity of your sitemap builder to make sure the sitemap has been updated if a post has been fetched.

Ivan