March 30, 2010 
How is it possible to have fresh content publishing from many different sources to your various WPMU blogs? Autoblog is currently the best WPMU plugin available for creating a robust network of syndicated content across multiple blogs. This plugin allows you to set up your own syndication hub without having to mess with cron jobs or PHP code. It is similar to what you’d expect with FeedWordPress and WP-o-Matic, except that it is professionally supported, includes tons of custom options, and is much more easily configured so that you can be publishing greater volumes of content in just a few minutes.
Benefits of Using the Autoblog Plugin:
- Easily syndicate content across platforms
- Create a searchable archive of content focused on one topic
- Boost SEO with more inbound and outbound links to your fresh content
- Vastly expand your site’s relevance and authority by adding content in just a few clicks
This is the easiest way to propagate your content or others’ across multiple platforms. Let’s say you have a corporate blog you want to post to your WPMU site under a subdirectory of /work. This plugin makes it easy for you to do that , even if the blog you’re pulling from isn’t using WordPress. Or perhaps you’re running a network of WPMU sites as a news media aggregator and you want to pull in the latest local crime stories to a /crime subdirectory and the latest financial news to /finance. You’ll have no problem with Autoblog. You can add as many feeds as you want. Other examples might include creating a searchable archive of all of your tweets on Twitter. That way you never lose that information and you can hunt through it using the WordPress search functionality. You’re able to import tags from other feeds and even assign categories to each of the incoming posts.
Effortless Blogging With Autoblog
Autoblog grabs the RSS feeds and uses WordPress to post items from the feeds as posts in your blogs. Simply add a new feed and assign it to one of your existing WPMU blogs.
From there you will have a host of other handy options that you can configure to customize the presentation of your feeds:
Features and Options for Autoblog:
- Choose if you want new posts to be published straight away, pending review or as drafts
- Select any author from your WPMU install
- Assign posts to categories and / or apply tags to them and / or import post tags with the post
- Filter posts that are included or excluded based on keywords or phrases
- Use excerpts (number of words configurable) or whole posts and choose what link (if any) you want to give to the original source
- Select how often you want Autoblog to check for posts
In short, this plugin (plus our blog and user creation plugins) essentially allows you to create a WordPress MU site with thousands of blogs that are automatically published to by RSS feeds, within just a few hours….with no code knowledge required! Save time and start pulling in relevant content on a daily basis with Autoblog. Set it up on your WPMU site and you’ve got a well-oiled machine to crank out new updates from your blogs on a daily basis with no effort.
Great plugin, if it worked. I’ve tried this plugin numerous times with my installation of WPMU and it never works.
In the past you couldn’t make this available to members to setup for their own blogs. That is the Admin would manually have to set this up for EACH blog.
Can users individually setup their own blogs using this now?
Mike – This plugin is limited to the admin only right now.
Scot – It might be the feed you’re trying to use. I was testing the plugin last night and didn’t have any issues with it. What kind of errors do you get?
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@Sarah Doesn’t matter what feed I use, it never works. I re-installed a fresh version of WPMU today with my version of autoblog 1.0.1 and still no go. I’m correct that both the autoblog.php file and the autoblogincludes folder both go into wpmu plugins, correct?
Scot – Yes they go in mu-plugins. Did you try something simple like a twitter feed? What part doesn’t work? I’m assuming you set up all the options for the feed and then the feed just doesn’t show? Did you click “Process” ? I wrote improved instructions the other day on the installation page for the plugin, so you might check those out.
@Sarah
I’ve tried Twitter feeds, WordPress feeds, you name it. Something I notice is that there is no Help functionality if I choose to click on the little icon. I have no visible admin functions other than setting up the feeds themselves. When you say ‘Process’ are you suggesting there is an option to process the feed on command, because I don’t have that option available. I have the drop-down menu that allows me to process by Never, 5 min, etc. and that’s it. Basically, I set up the feeds but they never arrive and I know they’re good feeds. My latest trial install has no other plugins installed other than BuddyPress.
Scot- Check out the Installation instructions for the plugin. I put some screenshots in there of where you should see the process button. http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/autoblog/installation/ Let me know if you have that or not.
@Sarah Just checked that out. I have no process button in my version or any of those features in the screenshot for that matter.
@Sarah
Screenshot: http://economicdevelopmentnetwork.com/files/2010/03/Auto-Blog-%E2%80%B9-WordPress_1270057138686.png
Scot – Hmm. Unusual. Maybe the tables didn’t get created in the database? You could try running the query that it is listed in the install instructions to see if that will build the tables you’re missing. Also, if you start a thread in the forums, I’ll get the developer for that plugin to take a look at your issue.
Sarah
Error when I run the SQL:
#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ”wp_autoblog’ ( ‘feed_id’ bigint(20) NOT NULL auto_increment, ‘site_id’ at line 1
@Scot – version 1.0.1 is a very old version, a lot of changes have been made since then – we are on version 2 now.
Barry
Well I bought it with a month’s membership last summer and it didn’t work then, either. This is very problematic, where you buy WPMUDEV plugins and they become outdated before you can utilize them unless you continue to pay. Very disappointed with my purchase.
Scot, it could be the hosting company you’re using. Some hosting companies are far better optimized for WordPress. I discovered this after going through weeks of frustration with problems with templates, plugins and even permalinks! These issues even baffled the WordPress gurus I work with. I switched hosting companies and the problems disappeared. My life is so much easier. Good luck.
Hey guys
Im with Scott, the AutoBlog plugin doesnt work and I am having the same exact issue. I have the latest version and I have tried everything just like Scot. FeedWordPress works with NO PROBLEM, i actually bought a membership to WPMU DEV just for the AutoBlog plugin. Dont get me wrong, WPMU DEV has lots of awesome plugins which work, and I love what they do. But they need to fix AutoBlog!!!
Hey Gene, I can guarantee it is very much fixed… but if you are running a year old version on a new copy of WordPress you are bound to have problems :/