Settings
Configure
- PHP Binary Location - the full path your your php location on your server.
- Script URL - the full URL to where the script is installed.
- License Key - this can be found in the Owner's Lounge of Cheapest Web Software. Login and copy it to this field.
- Crawl Feeds every X hours - Select how often you would like the script to crawl the feeds from your database for updates with new entries. It is recommended to set the value here to not less than 3 hours.
- Use Advanced Editor - Setting this will enable the WYSIWYG editor when editing your entries.
- Force UTF-8 - If enabled forces the software to use UTF8 encoding in MySQL. This is a recommended setting.
- Campaigns Pick Unique Entries ONLY - when enabled, the script will make sure that campaigns will NOT pick posts that have already been picked by other campaigns. Simply this means, and entry will be picked once and published to your blogs. If disabled, script works as normal and an entry won't be picked twice within same campaign, but different campaigns can still pick the entry.
Settings -> Cronjobs
This will let you check for the existence of your working cron jobs. If not present, then it will provide you with information on what cron jobs need to be set. If you cannot set cronjobs yourself, please consult with your hosting provider.
Sponsors
This option lets you maintain a list of your sponsors with RSS feeds. There a lot of advantages to assigning your feeds to their respective sponsors, the least of which is having the ability to disable all feeds for a sponsor which results in that sponsor's feed no longer being accessed when a new post needs to be published. It will simply choose from another sponsor assigned to that category or campaign.
Categories
This option provides you with an extended ability to categorize your feed, for example by niche. This allows you to really create an extended database of niche specific entries that can be picked and published to your blog(s). And even further specified by sponsor. This gives you an amazing amount of functionality to create many blogs on a variety of subjects/niches and from the same sponsor.
Feeds
This is where you can add, edit, search and manage all of your field. The form on this pages makes it really easy to import your feeds in bulk using a simple delimited list. Note that you can also specify both the sponsor and category that each feed should be assigned. If importing a list of feeds, be sure to enter the delimiter field so that the importer knows how to separate the feed's fields.
Note: if you specify your sponsor or category in the import list, make sure you enter their names exactly like you setup. This means exact upper/lowercase and spaces. The script is very specific when looking for matches with assigned Categories and Sponsors during a bulk import.
Entries
The entries section allows you to review any unapproved feed items in your database, or edit/manage existing ones. It also provides the ability to preview and "blog now", meaning you can publish a post your blog(s) immediately. Using the Custom option, you can create your own blog post and publish it directly as well.
Blogs
This entire section is dedicated to managing and maintaining the blogs to which Blogs Automater will post your reviewed and approved entries from your RSS feeds. Please review each section below for additional details.
Blogs -> Add New
This should be fairly straightforward. The first thing to do is to choose the type of blog. These days, WordPress is probably going to be the most common one, unless of course you have a series of blogs setup with Blogs Organizer. Depending on the option you select, additional information will be provider on the right side of the screen to let you know what information the script needs to proceed, such as your username and password, and location of the xmlrpc file. Enter your information and click "Add". The script will attempt to login and verify the credentials you provided and let you know if there were any errors.
Blogs -> Search
While not really an actual search engine, it is a list of all the blogs current set up in the database. On the right side of the entries, there is a circular icon, a green or red icon and a "campaigns" button. The circular icon forces a re-scan of your remote blog's categories. The red/green icon is a toggle to enable or disable that blog. And the campaigns button lets you edit the campaigns assigned to this specific blog. Mousing over any of the icons gives you a helpful text about that icon's function.
Blogs - > Blog Types
This simply lets you quickly see what remote blog systems are in your database and how many blogs are assigned to that specific Blog type and URL. Mouse over the icons to see what each icon does.
Campaigns
This is the section of the script that effectively controls what the final output will be on your blogs. It is very important, very functional, and requires you to spend some time with it to fully take advantage of everything it offers. Campaigns instruct the software to select specific entries from the feeds in your database and then to which blogs to publish those entries.
Campaigns -> Create New
Campaign Name - it is very important that you choose a campaign name that is descriptive. This will allow you quickly recognize it from within the script. It also lets you assign that campaign to a "group", for example, Hardcore or Softcore.
Update Interval - Effectively, this is where you set the frequency by which you want the script to publish a new entry to your chosen blog. Depending on your server configuration and resources, setting this to a very low number can potentially overload your server. For this reason, the script has a built in mechanism to help you avoid this by not allowing you to set a frequency any lower than every 5 minutes.
Pick Entries From - Here you will select the source of the entries. This is a very flexible and powerful setting. Each radio button option you choose will provide new menu items to help you narrow down the exact source you with assign.
Select Blog - Choose the blog you which to assign to this campaign.
Title Settings - This allows you to control the output of the titles.
Content Rewriters - This entire section allows you to create a predefined set of words and phrases that will replaced, bold faced, italicized, etc. In doing so, it gives you a way to "spin" your own content from an original, thus giving you a uniquely written entry.
Please note, the "Tagged Words" section is basically used for WordPress Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin, which is no longer supported and thus, not recommended to use for this section.
Campaigns -> Search
This area allows you to quickly and efficiently see an overview of your campaigns along with the ability to manage them. There are also icons to the right of each campaign. Simply mouse over each one to see a helpful tooltip display which will give you an indication of that specific feature's function.
Campaigns -> Group
Here you will define the groups to which you can assign your campaigns. For example, you may want to have a group for just "Hardcore" campaigns, and one for "Softcore". The possibilities are endless and, thus, some careful planning should be used when choosing your categories and campaign groups.
Templates - Headers and Footers
This should be a fairly straightforward section. Anything you place in the header or footer section will be appended to the beginning and ending, respectively, to each post you publish. Thus, if want to add a link to your main site on every entry publish, you could place a link in either the header or footer and it will shown on the published post.
Please note, both the header and footer template sections are fully HTML / CSS/ Javascript compatible.