Wordpress RSS PlugIn | RSSdoodle
*** On October 25, 2009 Technorati has temporarily disabled their API to upgrade and add new functionality. RSSdoodle uses the Technorati API and until Technorati updates and releases their new API (they say in 4 to 6 weeks) RSSdoodle will not function. As soon as the new API’s parameters are released, RSSdoodle will be updated to work with the new API and a new version will be released. Sorry for this inconvenience – John Lessnau ***
A few months ago I was searching for a WordPress plug-in that would allow me to pull in mashups of relevant RSS feeds on a regular basis that I could add to
this blog. I found a few RSS plug-ins but none offered the features I wanted and were way too complex to get up and running. I like plug-ins that are plug and play with no over the top setup routines. Then I started thinking about my easy to use plug-in Twitterdoodle and wondered if an “RSSdoodle” that pulls RSS feeds based on keywords/keyword phrases could be created.
Over the past month I have been testing various alpha and beta versions of RSSdoodle on this site while debugging for public release. In testing I had to go hog wild with way too many RSSdoodle posts and a few times two or three duplicate posts were auto created probably pinging a few poor sites to death. For this, my apologies, but it was done in the name of plug-in progress.
Version 1.0 is finally released. As designed, RSSdoodle works almost the same as Twitterdoodle. In a nutshell, you set up your relevant keyword searches that will auto create posts of RSS feeds pointing to matching articles with a link and a short blurb. You then decide how often you want to create mashup posts based on each keyword search, if you want the posts on your front page or not, if you want to dofollow or nofollow links to the articles in the post, and if you want to turn pinging on or off.
The comments I received (from trackbacks to this site during testing) were overwhelmingly positive as most people appreciate a link back to their articles. However, out of the thousands of RSS feeds given shoutouts I had one person ask that I not link back to their site in my RSSdoodle posts. So I deleted the link to his site and built in a feature to block feeds from any website entered in the options area of RSSdoodle. This had a side benefit of allowing me to block feeds from garbage websites and blog networks. For example, a lot of crap RSS feeds were being pulled from the vox.com network. So I blocked all vox.com RSS feeds from my posts. As I block more and more crappy sites, my RSSdoodle posts are improving in relevance and quality.
Anyway, to properly manage RSSdoodle autoposts, I recommend you use the plug-in sparingly (it’s easy to get carried away), and pull in only highly relevant RSSdoodle mashup posts to your website. If your website is about gadgets, then you would want to pull in daily posts of RSS feeds based on Gadgets. It’s that simple.
On a side note, since I started testing RSSdoodle in December my traffic has steadily increased and I have been picking up more readers of my RSS feed. Anyway, it’s a good way to bring likeminded bloggers to your site while you build out the core content of your blog. Just in case you’re wondering, here is what an RSSdoodle post looks like: Startups. Try RSSdoodle out and let me know what you think.
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Hi, I was able to try it on a WordPress 2.51 install but I received a warning I cannot recreate on a 2.7 install (otherwise I would cut and paste).
Do you run 2.7 or know if it has any problems?
Thanks, great plugin, and you are an awesome “social media marketer” – haha, just kidding, put the gun down.
RSSdoodle was not tested below 2.6. I run it on 2.7 now. If you upgraded to 2.7 after you tried to activate and still have trouble, delete the rssdoodle tables in mysql and reinstall.
I upgraded to 2.7 first. Wiped it out and tried to reinstall and got the same warnings. After it is installed, then I activate, then when I try to “add keyword search” by pressing the button to save I get these errors, the first line appears about 20 times the second line once:
Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Empty delimiter in /home/longestc/public_html/wp-content/plugins/rssdoodle/rssdoodle.php on line 675
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/longestc/public_html/wp-content/plugins/rssdoodle/rssdoodle.php:675) in /home/longestc/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 850
It’s hard to believe that you actually had someone ask you not to link to them, especially in this day and age, but if the NY Times can get sued for following someone I guess it can happen to anyone.
Some people put RSS feeds on their blog, then don’t want links back to their content. It doesn’t make sense but to each his own.
It’s not like RSSdoodle reposts the entire article, it just gives a short snippet about the article and a link to the article for the full read.
I like the links, but I hate scrapper sites, so maybe that’s what he thought you were doing, to give him a possible break.
I once had a blog that someone scraped 100% from my RSS feed then put adsense up and did not even link back to me. Now that’s scraping.
Twitterdoodle is great. It did get me in trouble though. I had it set up to post a twitter search page on a daily basis. I also had it post that page under a secondary category that is not referenced on the main page. However, and I bet there is a pref for this, so I’ll go check, the “Tweetsearch on #socialmedia 1-5-09″ posts were added to my RSS feed. So it looked like all I was doing was retweeting via twitterdoodle.
Am I in the dark, or can I supress the doodle from my feed.
Great work Mr. L!
@jmacofearth
Yes, they will show up in your RSS feed if the pages have an RSS link on them. There is probably a way via PHP to remove the RSS link to these pages. In the meantime I’ll see if there is a way to add an option to add or not add twitterdoodle posts to a blog’s RSS feed.
Hi John,
I got a trackback from your ebook post. Thanks for linking me.
A “do not feed” option would be killer. Let me know as progress progresses and I’ll be happy to beta when you have a working version.
@jmacofearth
John, I was referring to your comment above “In the meantime I’ll see if there is a way to add an option to add or not add twitterdoodle posts to a blog’s RSS feed.”
That’s what I meant by a “do not feed” option.
Yes, this feature to exclude RSSdoodle and Twitterdoodle from your blog’s feed will be added shortly. Hopefully within week.
John,
I’m having zero problems with TwitterDoodle, but with RSSDoodle, it only works when I check the “front page” box. I don’t want these posts on my front page, but that is the only way I can seem to get it to work. What am I doing wrong? http://www.firsthomeservice.com is the blog I’m using it with.
Joe, check your email.
Brian, I’m having the same issue. Did you get it sorted?
Chris,
John was incredibly helpful and gave me various tips to try, ultimately here is what I did and it worked. I tried it on a couple sites and doing the following in this order seemed to work on 2.6 and 2.7. On one installation of 2.6 it worked no problem. After all the testing I realized it is not the Lessnau plugin but must either be a conflict with another plugin or my host or something. Regardless here are the steps and it only worked if I did them in this exact order:
1. deactivate plugin
2. delete plugin from /wp-content/plugins
3. remove the tables from the databased (dropped them)
4. reuploaded (1.0, I did not upgrade to 1.1) to /plugins/
5. activate again
When I first use it I save the general settings at the bottom and I leave the text as is in the blocked area.
Then I save the specific settings for one search.
Saving in that order seems to work for me for some reason. Hope that works for you, sorry I do not have a “real” solution other than performing a setup in a specific order.
[...] my last post, the second of its kind actually. Looks like there’s a Wordpress plugin called RSSDoodle that allows automatic compilation and posting of posts based on a keyword search to your blog. [...]
The update of RSSdoodle and Twitterdoodle with an option to leave the auto posts out of your RSS is being tested on this blog now. So far so good.
Bugger. Tried that. Unfortunately I get the same problem.
strpos() [function.strpos]: Empty delimiter in /xxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/rssdoodle/rssdoodle.php on line 675
I have no idea.
Hi,
For testing purposes, is there a way to get RSSdoodle to fetch immediately? I am testing on a xampp local install and am getting nothing. I set the interval to one day, does that mean the first posts come after one day?
Thanks,
Lawrence
Forget my last message, I left off the quotes around the keywords. Put them in and a bunch of stuff magically appeared.
Thanks,
Lawrence
@chris,
The error reported must have come from the original RSSdoodle 1.0 because that function is no longer used on that line.
Make sure you have version 1.1 and, if you ever had 1.0 installed, that you save the general RSSdoodle settings once.
John
Thanks John,
Latest version has worked a treat!
Well I thought it had. There are no errors now but it never adds any posts. Any ideas? I’m using a one word keyword string that has results so I’m confused.
Hi John – Terrific plugin and was just what I was looking for!! Thanks!!
But, as am a newbie, I am hoping you can help me with this question regarding keyword string inputs:
..
1a) CORRECT EXAMPLE: from your demo page {keyword: SEO}
SEO Tips For Beginner Web…
BLOG RESULT: SEO Tips For Beginner Web… [note: 'SEO' is bold]
..
1b) MY EXAMPLE: one of my test runs {keyword: SHOES}
Michael Kors strong class=keywordshoes/strong are not only…
BLOG RESULT: Michael Kors strong class=keywordshoes/strong are not only known …
..
MY (AUTO-GENERATED) CODING for the ERROR section: strong class=keywordshoes/strong {should be: shoes}
..
SOME OF THE KEYWORD STRINGS I HAVE TRIED:
“shoes” AND “slingbacks OR slingback”
“slingbacks OR slingback”
shoes AND (slingbacks OR slingbacks)
shoes AND slingbacks OR slingbacks
..
For most of my attempts, the keyword string I entered did pull relevant articles; but formatting (bolding) was unsuccessful in all cases (same problem as above example). Is it me entering the keyword string incorrectly?
..
Thanks
Steve
oops .. I used exact HTML in my examples above … I thought it would be posted as exact text (ooops).
.
Let’s try this again …i just re-ran the page as an example .. :
.
http://sling-backs.com/posts-about-slingback-shoes-designer-slingbacks-as-of-january-25-2009
keyword string entered:
“shoes” AND “slingbacks OR slingback”
(but also have tried the others above)
Thanks again
Steve, your best bet is to go to http://technorati.com/search?advanced and work out the query there and then use that query with rssdoodle.
Hi John -
.
I just noticed the same problem exists in the screenshots posted in the Wordpress Plugin Directory:
.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rssdoodle/screenshots/
.
If you look at the “Posts about links …” screenshot – the same problem exists with the (non)bolded keywords (e.g. ‘links’ or ‘baseball’)
.
Is it occurring in only version 1.2?
.
Thanks
I am not sure I understand what the issue with the screenshot is…
Hey John,
Brilliant plugin – exactly what I need for one of my new projects.
I’m running Twitterdoodle on WP 2.7, and for some reason it simply will not save the searches I am trying to create. I get the success message, but nothing in my list of saved searches.
Guessing this may be a permissions/writing issue, is there a folder I can chmod to make this work? Or is there a different fix?
Thanks!
Wendy,
It does sounds like Twitterdoodle for some reason can’t write to its mysql table. Take a look at your mysql database to see if there are any Twitterdoodle related tables. There should be two tables *twitterdoodle_keywords and *twitterdoodle_tweets.
John,
I’m working with Wendy on this.
The database tables aren’t being created when the plugin is activated. Your first SHOW COLUMNS test succeeds because it tests against != ’search_string’ so tries to run the ALTER TABLE and UPDATE queries and falls through.
I haven’t troubleshooted thoroughly because I’m neck-deep in other stuff and the above is only a guess. The server we have this on has errors turned off and I haven’t taken the time to turn error reporting on and go through the troubleshoot process.
This is a place to start, anyway.
Regarding Twitterdoodle, I also have the same problem as Wendy.
I am on WP 2.7, and I noticed my Twitterdoodle wasn’t working. So I deactivated, dropped the tables in MySql, and deleted the plugin dir.
I reuploaded, re-activated, and now it will not create the tables on MySql. I tried re-deleting it and re-creating it, but still no go.
The Twitterdoodle plugin will not create the MySql tables.
@F.A. Let me know if the latest version fixed the Twitterdoodle problem at http://www.lessnau.com/2008/06/twitterdoodle-wordpress-plugin/
Hi John,
I am sure you are busy. I just wanted to let you know that I have not given up.
Here is an update from the comment I made earlier this weekend.
Almost everything is pretty much the same. The RSSdoodle posts show in the database, but are not published.
I have determined that the messed up internal links have nothing to do with RSSdoodle. I had a corrupted .htaccess file that I fixed.
Thanks,
Barb
Hi, thanks for a nice plugin. I am having the same problem as Wendy, the plugin won’t create the tables. Following these comments RSS now
btw, I’m using this to only post specific Tweets from my feed. For example, I’ll tag a tweet with #onbfdotcom and hopefully the plugin will pick it up and post it? Couldn’t find a better solution.
For those with Twitterdoodle issues, please post to the twitterdoodle thread: http://www.lessnau.com/2008/06/twitterdoodle-wordpress-plugin/
Brad,
Are you able to install RSSdoodle, because it creates tables also, if you have issues with both it probably has something to do with your mysql admin priviledges, if you have trouble only with twitterdoodle, it may an issue with the new version of Twtterdoodle. Anyone recently install Twitterdoodle 1.1 without an issue?
You can use these operators with twitterdoodle searches: http://search.twitter.com/operators
John,
Yes, I was able to add a keyword search using RSSDoodle 1.2. It saved it and listed it on the list at the top.
And to be sure, I checked and it did create *rssdoodle_keywords and *rssdoodle_posts.
Hi John,
First, thank you for RSSDoodle. I almost have it working. I am running WP2.7 and have version 1.2 of RSSDoodle.
Posts sometimes are collected in my mySQL database. By manually updating in your plugin’s admin panel, I once got one summary to publish, but automated posting does not work.
Do you have any ideas about what may be wrong? I have already tried all the suggestions in the comments above.
Thanks, Barb
@barb We were able to get RSSdoodle working by entering zzzz in the blocked domain field in general options. For some reason, this site did not like the blocked domain field blank.
John,
Thank you very much for looking at my test site. RSSdoodle is now working properly on a couple sites now that I have put a few random characters into the blocked domains field.
While the problem was frustrating to diagnose, I appreciate your efforts to help. I think this is a very useful plugin.
By the way, I suggest that whenever you do an update, you might add some brief explanatory text for some of the options on the plugin admin panel. This might be helpful to other users. In addition to ensuring that the domains field was not blank, this textual guidance, for example, could help users to understand whether or not to ping by default or per keyword search. Other selections are less ambiguous.
I only tore out a bit of my hair over this, and its absence in not noticeable. When I get the time, I will give Twitterdoodle a try!
Thanks again,
Barb
Thanks, there is more reason to comment than ever before!
Here’s a tip if your getting error messages or trouble getting posts to go up. In the “Blocked Website RSS Feeds” field in the general settings section – Add at least one site to block blog feeds from.
Something like lhsdjf.com would work. I block vox.com since there is a lot of garbage rss feeds on that site.
For some reason, some host servers don’t like that field blank. This has fixed problems for two people that I know of.