Has anyone tried Content Curation plugin?

If you are talking about the Walt Bayliss product --> then yes, I have owned incarnations of it since June of 2012. It started out as Galert, then it was transformed into Constant Content, and now it has morphed into what he is calling the Content Curation Plugin.

Walt supports his products and this plugin does work however you will need some 3rd party subscriptions to take full advantage of all of it's features. I have used it without any of the 3rd party features and it works well enough.

If you are looking for a developer license then you will need to purchase OTO #1 which also includes a couple of other tools that are not directly related to the Content Curation Plugin.

Best of luck!

-don

Good catch, estebillan...I have added that info to my original post.

Since I was already a GAlert dev. license owner I was sent a link to the download page for the fresh download and links to "upgrade #2" and "upgrade #3". I forgot all about upgrade #1! When the original Galert plugin was released here on Warrior Forum we had two options to purchase...a "Single Site" license or the "Sales and Multi-site" license which was the developer license and Walt offered no OTOs on that initial launch.

I just checked "upgrade #1" and times sure have changed as he is charging $97 on OTO for the dev license! Yes, he does include some extra tools with the dev license but they are not a part of the content curation plugin. I actually purchased both of those extra tools from Walt at a later date, but I never did use the keyword seo plugin--> maybe someday I will get around to giving it a workout.


Thanks.

I bought this, and have entered a support ticket, but, the program is not accepting my email address and key to activate this. I have tried EVERYTHING! Waiting to hear back. Quite frustrated since today is the only day I have to set this up until next Sunday. BUMMER!! I am guessing I won't get any support until Monday. I am sure they will fix it, but, just very dissappointed.

Nice and great info.. keep it up

Hello,

I like this idea, but what I fail to see and make me buy is the fact there are no sample sites or what the images would look like and if the images are automatically inserted or do you have to manually insert the images.

There must be a site we can actually go and see what the process looks like even if it's a new domain. I have another plugin that I use and I must manually insert everything curated but it gives you the choice before inserted.

I'm just curious if anyone questions the same thing.

Mike

I bought it and installed it day before yesterday and plugin has 2 serious problems, I'm awaiting support solution

1. plugin breaks on invalid rss feed
2. there is some encoding problem with inserting posts into the db

I hope I'll get a solution soon to get it working, I think it can be powerful addition.

@Steve

Hello,

#1 What is the encoding issue you have experienced?

#2 What do you mean the plugin breaks?

Does either of the issues you are experiencing have anything to do with the removed RSS feeds still autoposting that I mentioned above?

@ All Users

Here is a screenshot of what a post looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/75CJ4QQ.jpg?1

As with all autoblog tools that rely on rss feeds and keywords you will need to check your blogs as sometimes images and videos will get pulled that do not fit the post.

Regards,

-don

Here is another example post the plugin just created...

imgur: the simple image sharer

This time I had the plugin set to pull 2 RSS feeds per post. Unfortunately the second topic is not really related to cats but that's what happens when you use a very broad of term and you use the "pull everything" and "all results" options in google alerts. You can set goofge alerts to pull "only the best" and you can also set them to just pull news, videos, blogs, videos, discussions, or books.

The "see all stories on this topic" is a link back to the original story. The first paragraph you see is auto generated and it can include different links, html and spintax. You set that up in the backend of the plugin and it is automatically placed at the beginning or the end of your post depending on how you have it set.

You can also set how many images and videos you want added per post.

-don

@ Steve

What did you do to break the plugin? I have entered a couple of bunk rss feed links and the plugin still seems to be functioning.

@ All Users

Here is another sample post:

imgur: the simple image sharer

The images it is pulling have all been different but the same youtube video has been pulled a couple of times. I have seen this happen with other plugins and the videos function can be turned off or of course it is easy to delete the video. I only have one keyword set and I am figuring if I added many other related keywords I would not get dupes as often. I suppose it could be because it was the first video added to a couple of different feeds but that I am not sure on. It may just pull dupes at times.

I am not an affiliate of Walt's and never have been. I am trying to show you the power of the plugin and I know from experience that Walt does address major flaws in his products if their are any.

Yes, I know I basically repeated the same sentence twice when I set up that first paragraph in the posts I could have taken the time to set up some spintax too but I need to get back to work on my current project...

Regards,

-don

Last screenshot for a while. This one is quite long showing multiple posts and you will see that the formatting is nice enough, the images are different, but the youtube vids are often duplicated. This is only using one keyword....if I were to enter say 10 different breeds of cats I don't believe the vids would duplicated so often. If one needed to they could always add one of a number of YT auto post plugins that are available.

imgur: the simple image sharer

This setup is using mostly Google Alerts, Flickr, and Youtube. I have used this plugin several times in the past with Google Alerts and it worked well as the original release of this plugin was actually called GAlert.

You can also send out automatic tweets to multiple twitter accounts with this plugin. I will add some more keywords and try to report back later...

Best of luck to all.

-don

Update: I added more "image" keywords and it is indeed pulling a larger assortment of videos but it is still pulling dupes.

One thing I did notice though is all of the images are coming from Flickr...not sure why, maybe the Pixabay API is down? Or maybe my old key for the Pixabay API is not working....or I have set something up wrong.

Even though the Pixabay images are public domain the Pixabay API ToS requires a linkback and attribution.

"The Pixabay API is available free of charge to anyone wishing to integrate Pixabay images on their own site or application. Whenever you display Pixabay API results, you must make it clear to users that they are viewing images from Pixabay. A link back to Pixabay is required and you may avail of our logo at your discretion."

I will be putting a ticket in to see if this plugin abides by these API terms. I am thinking that it probably does not...hopefully I am wrong!

The Flickr images are not attributed at all so who knows if you are pulling CC images or what...I think Walt is trying to get around attribution by hotlinking directly to the image. Not the best system if you ask me and if you set a featured image then these images are stored directly on your blog. I would prefer knowing how the photo is actually licensed and having a way to provide proper attribution.

In-fact the Flickr Dev ToS states -

"The Flickr API is available for non-commercial use by outside developers. Commercial use is possible by prior arrangement.

When linking through to Flickr, link back to the photo's page and not to a hosting url that contains the term "farm" which does not provide any context or metadata around the photo."

"Flickr makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to other web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr. This provides a way to get more information about the content and the photographer."

I assume Walt thinks he can just hot-link the farm links without attribution... I will be submitting a question on the use of both APIs to Walt soon.

At least the linkback (but not the site name) for the GAlert curated snippets is there...I am hoping Walt can add the site name and bring the image stuff up to snuff. At least the GAlert content is not scraped in full with no linkback!

Bottom line is at $27 I like the plugin for the GAlert and Twitter functions and anything that works for me on top of that is gravy. At $47 or more I would expect the attributions to be perfect.

A ticket with my questions and concerns is going to Walt now...

Anyway, that's my report for today.

I hate to make another post on this today but it does appear as if v4.0.4 does have a pretty serious bug. My test blog is a blank blog on a Hostgator server and Walt's plugin is basically the only thing on there. I left v4.0.4 running all day and the plugin continued to post from the deleted GAlert feeds and not the new GAlert feeds. I checked the new feeds myself at Google and content that should have been posted was not posted.

So the old feeds have been deleted from the blog for half the day but the plugin continues to post from them!

This was not happening for me with the previous version of the plugin that I was using. Anyway, I have a ticket in that I am awaiting a reply on.

I'll let you know more when I know more.

-don

Image Attribution Update

I just heard from Walt re: image attributions.
He is having his lead programmer look into the other issues that I am experiencing. I will report back later but it does sound like he made quick work of getting the image attributions back in there.

Cheers

Update:

Photo attributions and linkbacks are there, and Pixabay posting is working, but the Flickr attribution/linkback is supposed to go to the photo page and it's currently going to the Flickr home page...that's not what is called for by Flickr ToS since it is the photographers that own the photos...not Flickr.

As far as the issue of posting from old feeds --> it was supposedly fixed in v4.0.6 but I have not had time to check it out yet.

The issue of Youtube dupes was ignored as well as another small issue or two that I reported. It's better than it was yesterday so we will see what today brings.

Cheers,

-don

Note: I just checked the blog and it is still posting from at least one or two of the old deleted GAlert feeds...maybe it will stop on it's own but I have no idea when. I suspect some entries in the DB need to be purged.

Udate:

I just heard from Walt's developer and the Flickr attribution will be made proper in the next plugin update. They are also making a minor change to the attribution anchor text which I also suggested that makes the posts look more professional.

As far as posting from deleted feeds it looks like all of the the feed data is stored in the database and the plugin continues to post from that info until the data is exhausted. So deleted feeds do not stop posting instantaneously.

As far as duplicate YT videos go I am still seeing a few of those but it might be because it pulls a series of vids from each feed...this is not perfect but I can live with it.

Overall this is a powerful plugin that tries to do autocuration the right way. This new version has been posting away for over a week now and the posts look well formatted and fairly professional...all in all a nice buy at $27 and probably still a good buy at $47.

Cheers

@ForumGuru
I had an RSS feed which contained some illegal mark-up (when you opened it in your browser it also notified about an error) and it broke the plugin as it stopped working at all. When trying to retrieve that particular feed it threw an PHP error (fatal)

As for the problem with the encoding, sometimes websites use special characters and these also get into their rss feeds, the table created by the plugin was collation latin something and it needs to be UTF-8. Because it wasn't the insert sql query failed hence the plugin wasn't working. Fixing the collation of the table to UTF-8 fixed this.

Now I also still experience some problems like when no YT video is found, the plugin still ads the short code for the video with an empty url.

And I want to be able to see which post comes from which rss feed because sometimes it is posting super old content and I've tried searching all feed manually but non of them showed this old content (from 2012).

I am sorry to hear you guys are having issues...I am not running the latest update yet but I must say my copy has been churning out posts with images and videos.

Here is a post from today:

http://i.imgur.com/7eLDoI6.jpg?1

Regards,

-don

I'm sorry to make this conclusion but Walt, owner of this plugin, is full of it.. and the plugin is self is NOT quality and I do NOT recommend anybody to buy it.

There are just no updates being released to fix these problems and they are not complicated problems. Every time I tell him about a bug he says yes thank you it will be fixed but nothing happens.

Screenshot of proof:
2014-05-06_1642 - SteveSRS's library

I've set the plugin to only find 1 youtube video and what it doesn't find anything it displays empty links as in the screenshot.

On top of that (and even more annoying) for some reason the plugin curates super old content. I've triple checked the originating feeds (which was A LOT of effort as the plugin makes is very difficult to trace which post comes from which rss feed) and the posted content is just super old. It includes a correct datetime stamp and is NOT anywhere near the top of the rss feed. Just based on the datetime alone the plugin should check this and not post the news.

I've told him about these errors WEEKS ago but nothing happens.
Churn & burn this product.

@Steve

It's weird that it's not finding YT videos for you as it has found a video for almost every post of mine and it has done so several times a day for more than a month. I have not seen the empty links that your screenshot shows.

As far as old content goes....I was told that the plugin it stores the content in the DB when the feed is set, so in the end some of the content that is posted turns out to be "older" content. I have seen this with one of my feeds....which continued to post the stored content long after the feed had been deleted.

Anyway, sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble and I do wish he would address the deleted feeds/old content thing. However, I have found with the right GAlert feeds the plugin is doing a fairly nice job of posting relevant information with images and videos.

I own several tools that I have purchased from Walt over the past couple of years and it does not seem like him to avoid known issues. Anyway, I am sorry to hear you have not received any satisfaction.

Regards,

-don