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.

My choice of WordPress contact form plugin is MM Forms, developed by Motionmill. I like the fact that not only does this plugin allow for creation of multiple forms, storing of submissions into a database and sending off e-mail notifications, but it is also AJAXed (thus avoiding having your site being reloaded) and provides CAPTCHA verification to lower spam submissions. MM Forms automatically stores the originating IP of the person submitting, which is useful if you have the inclination of blocking people off your site based on their IP addresses.

Again, the way to install a contact form plugin is the same with WP-O-Matic as well as any other WordPress plugins. As a recap, you install plugins by going to the Plugins menu and clicking on Add New. The you do a plugin search for MM Forms or use the keywords “contact form” to get the list of contact form plugins available. Click the Install link of your choice plugin, and you’re done. Again, everything should be smooth sailing if you use a reliable web hosting service such as WPWebHost (promo code WEBGRRRL30 gets you 30% off the actual price).

STEP 3: SET UP YOUR CONTACT FORM

There are at least three important information that you need to capture for your blog aggregator to make any sense:

1. Name of submitter/blog: It is up to you whether you want the author of the posts you’re grabbing from be the name of an actual person, or the name of the blog where the posts come from. In any case, this will be displayed as the Author of the post. I personally prefer using an actual person’s name due to the fact that submitters to my blog aggregator are allowed to submit as many blogs as they want, and I’ll just group them under one author. You will see my logic in the next few installments of this how-to.

2. E-mail address: You’ll need this for housekeeping reasons, e.g. sending confirmation e-mails, replying them in case their feeds don’t work, etc. And, actually, this is a must so that you can create their accounts. I know. What accounts? Confusing. But I’ll touch on that one too, later. Trust me.

3. Feed address: Geeks like me call it your RSS address, or ATOM address. Po-TAY-toe, Po-TAH-toe, it basically does the same thing – it is the location of a structured text file, called XML, which strips your web site naked leaving you with just the content. It’s like stripping off the dressing or sauce off, and leaving you with just the basket of fried chicken wings, and yet they still taste good, like chicken. You need to capture this information in order to grab their feeds into your aggregator. Duh.

You can request for any other information you want to capture in the form, other than the three things mentioned above. My advice is to keep your form simple and stick to just those three. Unless you have a phishing side of you that just couldn’t resist requesting people into submitting their usernames and passwords to you. I dunno. Your funeral.

Coming up next: Details on how I set up both WP-O-Matic and MM Forms to work for my blog aggregator.

Stay tuned.

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. Brace yourself, because this is going to be one long post (more so due to my ramblings).

I’m assuming you know what WordPress is and how to set up. If you don’t, you can do a Google search for “how to set up WordPress” tutorials. This site is, after all, called Blogging Fu, a place where you take blogging to a whole new level. So no offense, but don’t expect too much newbie tutorials here.

(Update: This version of WordPress is the self-hosted version that you can freely download from WordPress.org, not the WordPress.com blog hosting service. No, you can’t create your blog aggregator at WordPress.com, no matter how much you beg for it.)

I’m also assuming that you have a web hosting account that can support WordPress. The optimum server setup should basically be Linux + Apache + PHP + MySQL + PHPMyAdmin. From there, you can run the 3-step WordPress setup (or use Fantastico if you have one in your hosting account) before your blog aggregator installation starts. Yeah, do a Google search on this too if you’re not sure.

(Shameless promo plug: Need a reliable WordPress hosting service? Go with WPWebHost. They’ll guarantee your WordPress site will run as smooth as silk on their servers. Take it from me, I absolutely LOVE their fast support! Use the coupon code WEBGRRRL30 when you register to get yourself a 30 percent discount!)

Once your WordPress is in place, you’re ready for this very important part.

STEP ONE: INSTALL WP-O-MATIC

I literally had someone I was helping online one sunny day, exclaimed “the hell??!!” to me via IM.

So, what the hell is WP-O-Matic?

Simply put, WP-O-Matic is a free WordPress plugin that pulls information out of a web site’s feed and adds it into your site as individual posts.

HELL YEAH!!

If nothing else, this would be the only plugin you need to add into WordPress for it to run as a blog aggregator (but there will be more, I promise).

If you’re running WordPress 2.8 or better, you can automatically install this plugin by going to the Plugins menu and clicking on Add New. The you do a search for the WP-O-Matic plugin and click the Install link. And, if you follow what I told asked you to do, i.e. use a reliable WordPress hosting like WPWebHost (with promo code WEBGRRRL30), then you should be able to install WP-O-Matic with no error whatsoever.

Coming up next: installing another important plugin to your WordPress blog aggregator, and step-by-step guide on adding content.

Stay tuned.

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? Well, blog aggregators are used for numerous reasons, mainly to gather posts from the blogosphere concerning a specific topic, or blogs sharing the same theme. Do a Google search for the term “blog aggregrator” and you will see a myriad of aggregators, covering topics from music to education, from general RSS feeds to geographically-focused topics.

I currently run a blog aggregator called Giuk.net, which aggregates blog posts created by Sabahans (i.e. those who are from Sabah, a state in Malaysia’s North Borneo… you know, where the 1st season of Survivor was done). As ad administrator of the site, here’s how I maintain the blog aggregator:

1) An interested blogger fills up the registration form online at the site. An automatic e-mail is sent to me.

2) I verify the information and any other requirements for the site to be eligible for registration (mainly the compulsory backlink to Giuk.net and some proof that he/she is really a Sabahan).

3) I enter their RSS or ATOM feed address into Giuk.net’s administration dashboard (which is really a WordPress dashboard).

4) The blog aggregator periodically crawls (i.e. visits and checks) the list of feeds in the aggregator and adds new posts into Giuk.net.

Here’s the thing about my blog aggregator –  not only do I have to do just steps 2 and 3 manually, but I also did the initial setup of the aggregator within just half an hour! It’s that easy!

Wondering how I did it? Make sure to tune in to my next Blog Aggregator how-to installment, where I’ll lead you step-by-step on how I did it with WordPress.