Written by Blogging Fu Sensei
Before we go to Step 4, it is imperative that you have properly set up both your contact form and autoblogging plugins (MM Forms and WP-O-Matic respectively) as mentioned in the previous tutorial. What I’m really trying to say is:
- You have created a Page where you have inserted a contact form that acts as your registration form, and have that linked in your main blog page. Make sure to call it “Registration Form” or “Join Now” to make it obvious to your visitors that is where they can go to provide their details.
- You have set up WP-O-Matic fully and that you have already set a specific time in your cron service so that the plugin can fetch content from your users’ blogs periodically and automatically. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blog aggregator, howto, wordpress
Written by Blogging Fu Sensei
STEP 2: INSTALL A CONTACT FORM PLUGIN
As mentioned in the previous in Part 2, you will need to install another important plugin before your WordPress blog aggregator is ready for action.
Simply put, the contact form plugin will allow visitors to your site to register their blogs for inclusion into your blog aggregator. There’s nothing wrong with asking them to pop you an e-mail, but contact forms make it more convenient for registrants and looks more professional, and you do want your site to look professional, don’t you?
You can install basically any type of contact form plugin that are available for WordPress. My recommendation, though, is to select one that not only allows you to receive an e-mailed notification of a new registration, but also has the ability to store those submissions into a database which you can refer to later via your WordPress dashboard.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blog aggregator, howto, wordpress
Written by Blogging Fu Sensei
Before we delve into the first technical setup of a blog aggregator using WordPress, it is imperative that you set a theme for your site: what type of content am I going to collect? Who is my target audience? How are my users going to use the content?
The blog aggregator I manage, Giuk.net, focuses on grabbing information from blogs whose owners are geographically related to one another, and the main purpose of Giuk.net is to bring together these content as a form of social networking between those blog owners and users of the aggregator, without having to subscribe to each and every RSS feed or having to put effort to discover new blogs of such. You should have a similar idea on how your content can be used and by whom.
Now, on with the show. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blog aggregator, howto, wordpress
Written by Blogging Fu Sensei
The term “blog aggregator” is a combination of two words: blog and aggregator.
Okay, I can already imagine some of you going “duh! of course it is”. However, humour me for a minute and let me explain this to you in simple terms, for the benefit of those who really don’t know what a blog aggregator means.
Blog = a web log, or a chronology of news called posts, which are usually snippets of information with hyperlinks pointing to the original article or news.
Aggregator = to combine into a whole, quoting directly from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Therefore, blog aggregator = a collection of posts from web logs combined into one single site, i.e. another blog.
Why would you need a blog aggregator? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blog aggregator, howto, wordpress
