How To Replicate Techchuck AutoBlog

To add a link back to the original source in single page view, I hacked this together. Place under the content tag.
Code: 
<?php $source = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'wpo_sourcepermalink', true);
$urlsource = '<a '.'href="'. $source .'"target="_blank">'.'Read More...'.'</a>';
echo $urlsource; ?>
 
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since my themes have been messing up I might be using this...

any problems I should be aware about? Like shifting sidebars?
 
specokirbs can you sned me your feeds file from wp-o-matic so I can save myself some time. This gets very time consuming, I will set up the category icons myself
 
Thanks but I thought you had more than that sorry I have the ones you have. Do you have an MSN or Aim we can talk on about this because im getting the hang of this and I like it alot. I think I can get a really close replica to Techchuck. Also take a look at tech.ccortez.com it is a really good replica made by nauman but I just need to be able to filter the ending of the feeds.
 
I've been watching this thread with a lot of interest, but as someone else pointed out earlier (either in this thread or the original one asking how TechChuck was being done) it would be cool to look beyond just replicating what's already being done and see if there aren't things that could be added to improve upon it.

I've been tinkering with my own version of this as I read along. I'm using a custom plugin that handles all of the feeds because that gives me better control over what's displayed and how on my posts, which I like being the control freak that I am. I've also used a WP theme that has image thumbnail handling built-in so I didn't have to fuss with that at all. The only short-fall to this is I have to manually create each posting by adding a title, single tag (the feeds get pulled based on the tag I enter) and post image. Then the plugin gathers all the rest for the post. So my version isn't fully automated, but it takes like 2 minutes to create a post and I think the output is worth that investment for me.

Another thing I've done differently is to use Friendfeed instead of Twitter. I think it gives a broader range of options since users on Twitter only have their tweets in their feed, but on FF users have their tweets, their blogs, their facebook streams and etc.--plus I just wanted to change things up a little bit.

As for more that could be added, I'm thinking things like podcasts, there must be at-least one or two services out there with searchable directories that come with rss feeds of the search results, and maybe images from the creative commons, does Flickr search have rss? I haven't checked but if it does then it would be simple to add some additional graphics to posts. If Flickr doesn't offer this what about other services like picaso?

How about blogs? Google blog search comes with rss, so it's a simple matter to add a custom feed based on your post keyword that would pull results from the blogosphere.

Not all of these would be good additions on every blog obviously, if you setup a tech blog then adding creative commons images would probably be silly, but if you're setting up a niche blog on art or gardening then it might add value to your posts.

Anyone else have ideas on other things or sources which might be beneficial to some? It would be cool to expand the discussion and options I think.
 
I found this interesting article about Adding Keyword Specific RSS Content to your Blog at http://ka-boom-marketing.com/rss/adding-keyword-specific-rss-content-to-your-blog-using-feedwordpress-google-alerts-and-yahoo-pipes/

If you click on the link you can see the full article with the images...
Ok, this is going to be a long one? but tonight I explained to a friend how to do this and I thought it would be a useful post for someone.

If you want to add automated content for niche sites using a self hosted Wordpress blog you can use these free tools to create a keyword specific feed to be added and updated automatically.

You will need :
A Google Account
Google Alerts
FeedWordPress Plugin
Yahoo Account
Yahoo Pipes

First you want to set up a Google Alert for your specific keyword phrase. This is going to have Google give you the heads up whenever your phrase is mentioned online. (great way to keep up with your niche)

To set up a Google Alert log in to your Google Account and click on ?Alerts?


my-account

Make sure you change your delivery method from email to feed. Enter your phrase in the search terms box

google-alerts1

Now for example if I were setting up a recipe blog and were targeting the specific niche of Low Carb Recipes that is exactly what I would put in my ?search terms? box.

Search Terms: low carb recipes
Type should be ?comprehensive?
How often: as-it-happens
Deliver to: feed

click ?create alert?

Once you do you?ll be taken to your ?manage feeds? page. Right click the Feed link on the alert you just created and ?copy link location?.

You?re going to want to save this url in notepad or textpad for the time being. You?ll be using it soon enough.

Now you want to download and install feedwordpress from the wordpress.org extensions gallery. Here?s the link, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress/ this plugin allows you to add rss content to be automatically posted to your blog.

Normal installation as any other plugin? upload and activate.

You?ll want to tweak the settings to your preferences. These are the settings I use (for niche content blogs only? not for major flagship blogs which I don?t use RSS content for)

Syndicated Link category: ?keyword? News
check for new posts: automatically every 120 minutes
Publish syndicated posts immediately
Permalinks point to Original Website
Tags: your tags for your keywords
Syndicated Authors: are attributed to your admin account name

Categories for syndicated posts: These will be separate keyword focused categories for each feed. As we filter in Yahoo pipes you?ll see what I mean.

So now you have your feed url copied and your plugin installed and activated. Now we want to log in to pipes.yahoo.com and create a new pipe.

Under ?sources? on the left hand side drag a ?fetch feed? on to your work area. Add your google alert feed that we copied earlier to the url area.

Now drag and drop a ?filter? from the left hand side under ?Operators?. You want to change the defaults in the ?filter? box to:

Permit items that match all of the following
item.title contains your keyword

Add as many filters as you need to this box to accommodate your main keyword phrase and any long tails you may be targeting.

Connect the fetch feed box to the filter box by grabbing and dragging the little blue button on the bottom of the fetch feed box to the top blue button on the filter box. Do the same to connect the filter box to the pipe output box.

Now click the refresh link at the bottom of your workspace. You should be seeing something like this.

pipes_-editing-pipe-1

Now you want to save your pipe and run it. You?ll be taken to a new page, this is where you will copy the link location of your pipe feed.

Click on ?More Options? on your completed pipe page then right click and copy link location on the ?get as RSS? link.

This is the RSS url you are going to add to your Wordpress blog using the FeedWordpress plugin.

Go back to your blog admin and click on manage/syndication.

Add your new RSS url under the ?Add a new syndicated site? area and then click syndicate.

Edit the feed to make sure your categories and tags are correct. Once you add your feed and check your settings you may want to go back to the manage syndication area and manually update the link. This will immediately activate your feed and should start posting items to your blog if there is anything in your feed to grab.

For a blog that covers a wide niche I create a separate Google alert for each main keyword phrase then filter it down using Yahoo pipes and create as many pipes as I need for the my Wordpress categories.

I hope this helps someone.
Click to expand...

This shoud be used as a guide only, you can use it with WP-o-Matic, also there are some intersting comments to the article on the site linked above.
 
well this help is prety much saving most of you guys from lots of hours of research but you must be warned that you also need to know website editing or at least afford paying others to take care of your website when problems occur; and trust me with autoblogs, problems always occur. Plugins / Themes always need to be edited to fit your needs. I've always hit this wall of needing to change the plugins / themes and I didn't always succed on my own. I had to spend another time searching for the right edit ... and it's prety much time consuming.

The owner of the tech website has made bunch of editings to his website and plugins. I know this because I've worked on cloning his website and after hours of editing my website is still not close to his website.

In other words .. if you know a more secure way of making money, I recommend you go with that. Only try this autobloggin stuf if you know what you are doing and what you get your self into.

Anyway ... I thought some of you guys should know this before jumping into this so you know what the risks.

GL with autobloggin :) Cheers
 
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agreed claudiu you need to know how to mantain the plugins etc if its just a basic autoblog it shouldn't be too difficult, just maintaining the plugin you are using to get your content otherwise you may end up wasting your time and efforts...fortunatly there is alot of good info on here and if you get stuck you can always ask someone however if you do make sure you fully understand what they are doing and why so next time it goes wrong you can fix it yourself!
 
Claudiu, well said, that's why in my tinkering I wanted to minimize the amount of hacking required for the plugins and theme files, so I decided to use a theme that would handle the thumbnails work for me, meaning 1 less plugin to have to hack, and then created a custom plugin to handle the feeds, everything from gathering the data to caching it and displaying it on my pages.

There's lots of good themes that will handle the thumbnails, Options is great if you can find it, Mimbo too, and lots of other magazine style themes.

What I did stripped everything down to a single plugin for me. Of course I then added the All-In-One-SEO and Related-Posts plugins too, but neither of those require any hacking or theme mods to use, so I've basically removed all of the hard maintenance stuff from the auto-blog I've been working on.

Of course, the trade-off is that I have to manually create each post title, tag and upload an image for my posts because of how the theme and plugin work, but still that takes almost no time and the end result is a cool looking output that's content rich.

To me, that's the trick to being effective with auto-blogs that you're using for real human traffic, they have to look complicated and like you put a lot of time into every posting to impress your visitors, but on the back end they have to be as simple to deal with as possible to make them worth running for you.
 
This is a very interesting thread. I was considering creating some autoblogs, but this approach of creating mashups is a much better solution than what most people are doing with this.

I'm going to have to play with this a little bit. Thanks for the ideas.
 
Yeah its even better because you can get past the Search engines by saying your an aggregation site
 
Any one tell me how techchuck let the pics in his content stay at the top left of the content and also can zoom in the pic,what plugins does he use?Thanks...
 
hey thanks for huide, im a total noob this is my first blog, im at step 2 but have a problem, when i make a post and test it i hget a [...] at end of post but it is not link to anything? what should i do?
 
if you look further up the thread there is the code you need to replace the_excerpt with sorry not to be more help going out to town pm me if your still stuck donkon
 
Where do I find the code to change the color of the interface of "elegant box" and how do I make the header bigger?
Is it possible to add tabs in the top of the interface?
Thanxxx
 
for the interface its in the theme options as fot the header you need to edit the css style sheet
 
You have to edit the css file to change fonts/colors/header size etc.
 
Namun can you upload your elegant box folder, so I can save myself a little time.
 
ah thanks. Its looking good so far just wondering about cron and feed frequency, not sure if i am doing it right. I setup cron to run once every hour and setup 5 campaigns each with 3 hour frequency, and i just activate 1 by 1 ever hour??? the weird thing is when i check the WOM dashboard it still shows very similar count downs, :

category 1 : 2h 53m 34 s
category 2 : 2h 32m 12s

should i change frequency to 1 hour, please advise. thanks a lot
 
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