Autoblogging Video: YouTube RSS Feeds, Widgets and WordPress

How-to Make a Internet Video on Demand Server that costs Nothing (Really)

Automatic, Free Video Content Daily

Video content is fun to add to your site and what better way than automatic linking to YouTube’s top videos. It saves space, time, and the users decide on the best posts. It can’t get much fresher than this!

5 Steps to Making a RSS Video Widget

1. Select a YouTube RSS Video Feed

2. Select a RSS Widget from Widgetbox

3. Add the RSS Widget code to your WordPress Text Widget

That’s it, your done!

You can see an example at YouGenerate.com

1. YouTube RSS Feeds

Here is a link to all of YouTubes video feeds. Copy the URL of the feed, you will need it for the RSS Widget.

Once you have the feed you like then add it to a Widget.

2. Widgetbox RSS Widgets

I like Widgetbox because they have so many widget to choose from. I chose the RSS Scroll Box because it fit in the sidebar nicely. If you want a different look do a search on widgetbox with “rss” and find the widget the you like.

3. Create a Text Widget in WordPress - Add RSS Widget Code

In WordPress Administration select Presentation, Widgets and add a new Text widget.

Drag-and-drop the Text Widget into your themes sidebar.

Open the widget window and paste the RSS Scroll Box code (javascript) in and close the widget. Select Save Changes to save your edits.

Take a look at your site and make any adjustments you need to.

Cool Stuff

You can add as many widgets and feeds as you want. Use this to build niche Video on Demand servers without the cost of streaming server, bandwidth, storage …

Give it a try it is really fun and cost effective.

Have you tried this yet? Post a comment and let me know.

Plurk This Post Digg This Post Ping This Post Stumble This Post

The Power of Autoblogging: WordPress and RSS Feeds using WP-o-Matic

Autoblogging with WordPress

Facibus has a nice write up on “autoblogging” (automatic posting to blogs via an RSS feed). You can see it here. The issues Facibus was having have been fixed in the latest version and you should give it a try.

I have been playing with WP-o-Matic for some recent projects- &chicks and Web Camera Review are just a few examples. The big advantage is you can build a site with a TON of information in a matter of minutes.

The software is still beta and has a few issues but you should be able to work around them.

First, the CRON function that make it automatic requires Unix CRON and I don’t have access. So I go to my web site and update everyday or so. This isn’t a huge issue because it can pull so much data in so quickly.

It would be nice to see the CRON functionality incorporated into the WP-CRON or internal WordPress CRON.

Second, the image caching (under Options) has been giving me problems so I turn that off and things work much better. Especially when posting videos. Yes, it will work with videos from RSS feeds (more on this in a later post).

RSS Content Sources

Here are a fee RSS content sources that you can test with to build up new Niche sites.

Ezine Articles - RSS Feed - there is a TON of info in here for Niche Site. Take a look!

IdeaMarketers charges $9.95 a month for access to their library in RSS.

ArticleFever has a feed of their latest articles published.

The News Room - This has 175 News sources and they say you can use the news on your site. Worth looking into.

Syndic8 - more feeds than you can imagine, but get permission before you use them.

These are just a few sources. Try doing a search on “rss feed syndicate” and you will find many more.

Has anyone else got some good tips or sources? Post them in the comments, please.

Plurk This Post Digg This Post Ping This Post Stumble This Post