What are the risks in running wp-autoblog and the like?

[Bill]

I was just wondering if anyone has any words of warning about running wp-autoblog?

Any horror stories. or situations in which the plugin didn't behave the way you expected?

[twn]

Duplicated content could become a issue in the future.
That is likely one of the biggest risks.

[walrus]

The current version of WP-Autoblog will only post excerpts of the feeds you give it. You can't get it to do full feeds. Plus, if I remember correctly, it no longer lets you credit the original author.

The previous version did both.

Other than that, I've only had one small problem. I've got one feed that it just won't read. It read it initially but hasn't...and wont update since. I run the same feed in a desktop feed reader with no problems but haven't validated it so I can't say for certain that it's not a feed problem.

I haven't updated to WP2.1.x yet so I can't say whether it functions well with it or not.

[Bill]

What does it look like when it's working?

I installed it on a test blog, removed the ping url in options just in case it went nuts, entered an xml feed from a sponsor, saved the settings and then hit the "run script now" button, but nothing at all seemed to happen - well, the admin plugins page for wp-autoblog configuration refreshed.

No error messages, nothing...

Any thoughts on what's happening? ( i did set the permissions for the wp-autoblog/cache folder, trying 755 and 777 - still nothing.)

[walrus]

It should read each of the item areas in the feed and add them into the database as a post. So you should end up with a post with each item in the feed.

It sounds like you've got the plugin that is funky anyway.

Try using this version: http://www.xxxblogindex.com/wp-autoblog.zip

The setup is under options.

[hony]

I'm using feedwordpress which I bvelieve is similair, but not the same.

Problems I've found is that it will sometimes update an old post instead of create a new post. I think this is something wrong with the sponsor feed though (changing the content but leaving some "key" values the same). That's a guess.

Duplicate content is a concern from a SEO perspective -- I attempt to tackle that with some automatic word substituations so the text will not be *identical* (but admittedly extremely similar) to other blogs using the same feeds.

So far it seems ok.

[Bill]

Thanks Walrus, that version of the plugin behaved differently and seemed to work. (altho the feed, when it was made into posts, lost the links to the galleries that were clearly there in the feed itself when viewed thru ie7 - which is to say, it didn't really work, because the resulting posts were missing the critical links.)

So, based on reading a few other posts, I was wondering if there was a tool like this that made drafts, rather than posts. That way you could edit the draft to make it more unique, and weed out the stuff that doesn't work.

But it sounds like no such plugin exists?

[walrus]

I would assume that the links were probably in the author section and you are not giving attribution to the original author. But thats just a guess. Before you do that you may want to edit the plug-in as it's author likes to add his own little bit to it as well.

I haven't found a plugin that will read to draft instead of post.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by walrus

I would assume that the links were probably in the author section and you are not giving attribution to the original author. But thats just a guess. Before you do that you may want to edit the plug-in as it's author likes to add his own little bit to it as well.

I thought that was a possibility, selected giving attribution to original author, and reran the script - no change in the posts it had already made. Then I removed the feed url I was testing from the settings, planning to experiment more with it later.

What do you mean, edit the plugin? What would I edit out, in this case?

[walrus]

It won't change the posts that have already been made. You'll need to delete a post and then re-run the script. It only updates the database when it finds something has changed.

You could edit wp-autoblog.php line 161

$post['post_content'] .= ' and <em>software</em> by <a href="http://elliottback.com">Elliott Back</a>';
} else {
$post['post_content'] .= 'Created using <em>software</em> by <a href="http://elliottback.com">Elliott Back</a>';

and remove the link.

I'm not a php kind of guy so I simply did this:

$post['post_content'] .= ' ';
} else {
$post['post_content'] .= ' ';

[T Pat]

I've just started playing with wp-Autoblog and now I have a couple questions
1, images are not displaying anyone have a solution?
2, can wp-Autoblog be setup to display feeds in catagories?

[walrus]

Originally Posted by T Pat

I've just started playing with wp-Autoblog and now I have a couple questions
1, images are not displaying anyone have a solution?
2, can wp-Autoblog be setup to display feeds in catagories?

1. Your probably using the new version of autoblog, try using the one I posted.

2. It will post to categories that are contained in the feed. If no feed category exists it posts to the default category.

[T Pat]

Originally Posted by walrus

1. Your probably using the new version of autoblog, try using the one I posted.

2. It will post to categories that are contained in the feed. If no feed category exists it posts to the default category.

Thanx for the info Walrus
I couldn't get the new version to work at all, I'm using the version you posted the link to.

I'm going to try it on another blog to make sure it's not an operator error

[walrus]

I've got it working on a bunch of blogs running WP2.0.4 with no problems at all.

I have a small problem on some 2.0.5 blogs but not of the nature you are speaking.

I haven't tried with 2.1.X yet. Probably cause I don't want to fix all my templates when I upgrade.