How to Use WP-o-Matic

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WP-o-Matic is a powerful source of condensing multiple sources of RSS feeds into one website.

Let’s say you run a radio show and want to condense the blogs of all your show hosts. Or you run a company and want to condense all your employee’s blogs into a company blog. Or you personally run a podcast, a website, a newsletter, etc and want to condense them all into one blog.

Instead of having to go into all these sources individually to copy and paste the posts, WP-o-Matic will allow you to easily download all their RSS feeds in one place and automatically post the resulting feed.

Here’s how to setup and use WP-o-Matic.

Step 1: Download and Install WP-o-Matic plugin

 

Go to your plugins tab and do a search for WP-o-Matic. Click Install to install the plugin.

1-Install-WP-o-Matic

 

Step 2: Go to WP-o-Matic’s Settings

 

To begin the setup process, go to your Settings tab and go to WP-o-Matic’s settings.

2-Settings-WP-o-Matic

Step 3: Run the Simplepie Test

 

The first thing you need to do when you install WP-o-Matic is install Simplepie. Basically this makes sure your server will work with WP-o-Matic. Most major servers will pass the test.

 3-Test-Simplepie

Click next after completing the test. It should just take 30 seconds.

Step 4: Check Your Time Settings

 

Make sure your time settings are correctly set. WP-o-Matic needs to time its updates, so getting your time settings right is essential.

 4-Check-the-Time

Step 5: Install Cron Job

 

This is the trickiest part of the installation. In order for WP-o-Matic to work, you need to install what’s called a “cron job,” which is basically a recurring command given the server. This has to be installed onto the server, not in WordPress.

When you get to Step 3 of the setup process, you’ll see a line of code like this:

5-Cron-Code

Each server will have a different way to setup a cron job. Here we’ll just show how it’s done in Hostgator. Most other hosts will have a similar installation process.

First log into your web host and go to the cPanel. Then find the cron job tab. If you can’t find it, press CTRL+F and type in “cron”.

6-cPanel-Cron-Job

Next, you’ll either paste in the whole code, including the numbers and asterisks, or you’ll have to translate them into their respective time fields.

The */20 * * * * part of the code is the time part of the code. The rest is the Unix code that’s to be executed at the time specified by the first part of the code.

In Hostgator, you’ll need to specify that the command is to be executed every 20 minutes, then paste in the code in the “command” box.

7-Cron-Command
Again, in other servers you might just copy and paste the whole code. In hostgator, you need to break up the time part of the code, then paste the rest into the command box.

This is the trickiest part of the installation. If you have difficulty, just email your webhost and a tech support admin will likely be able to assist you.

After the cron job is installed, your WP-o-Matic plugin setup is complete. Next you’ll need to setup your RSS feeds.

Step 6: Add a Campaign

 

It’s time to setup your first campaign. Click on “Add Campaign” on the left hand side of the WP-o-Matic settings.

 8-Add-Campaign

Step 7: Basic Setup

Give your campaign a name. The name’s only visible to you. Check the box to make sure the campaign is active and give your campaign an ID if you want.

 9-Basic-Setup

Step 8: Enter Your Feeds

 

Navigate to the Feeds tab. Enter up to four feeds. Any time a new post appears on one of these feeds, it’ll then automatically be posted to your blog.

In general, it’s best to just have one feed per campaign. That way, you can disable the whole campaign without interfering with the rest.

The exception is if feeds are very close in nature. Say you’re running a company blog with three people: Jared, Kacey and Max. If Kacey and Max only have 1 blog each, you’ll put them into separate campaigns. But if Jared had two, you might just put both of Jared’s blogs into the same campaign.

 10-Add-Feeds

Step 9: Categories & Rewrites

 

In the Categories tab, select one of the categories to put the posts under.

 11-Categories

The rewrites tab is strictly optional. It allows you to substitute words imported from the feed for other words.

For example, if you wanted to substitute all swear words for less offensive words, you could. Most people would just leave this tab blank.

 12-Rewrites

Step 10: Options

 

The options tab allows you to customize a lot of how WP-o-Matic behaves. Each of these options comes with an explanation underneath.

 13-Options

Step 11: Submit & Fetch

 

Click the submit button in the upper right to finish your campaign setup. Assuming everything was setup properly, you’ll see a completed setup box like this:

14-Submit-and-Fetch
At this point, WP-o-Matic will automatically fetch new posts from the RSS feeds and populate your blog with those posts.

If you want WP-o-Matic to automatically fetch blog posts now, just click “fetch it now” and it’ll collect the last 15 posts from those feeds.

 

All this setup shouldn’t take more than 60 minutes, assuming no troubles with the cron job. Now your blog will automatically pull new content from these RSS feeds, with little to no work from you until you choose to pause the campaign.