WP RSS AGGREGATOR
Step 1: Set Up WP RSS Aggregator
Install WP RSS Aggregator and its Add-ons
As I've already mentioned, WP News Desk runs on the WP RSS Aggregator pluginand it's add-ons. In fact, it makes use of the Feed to Post and Full Text RSS Feedsadd-ons.
The Feed to Post add-on is what allows us to import the feed items from RSS feeds as WordPress posts and have them displayed within our blog, while the Full Text RSS add-on is used to bring in the featured images for those sources that don't provide them within their RSS feeds.
Add the License Keys
Once the plugins are installed it's important to add the license keys for the premium add-ons. This is important to keep receiving updates and support, but it's also a requirement for the Full Text RSS Feeds add-on to work.
Set Up the General Settings
Once the plugins are installed it's time to select the General Settings. Here we went ahead and set an age limit of 2 months that will be applied to all sources, unless told otherwise in the feed source's settings, and we also set a Feed Processing Interval of 2 hours, meaning new posts are fetched every couple of hours.
Apart from that, the Feed to Post settings were also set to the options that we wanted applied to all feed sources as they were created. The most important ones included setting the Post Type to blog posts, using canonical links, setting the author to use to be the one provided in the feeds, and setting the featured image to be the first image in the content, with a fallback to the feed image as a last resort.
Set Up the Categories
To ensure that you're kept up to date with every bit of WordPress news out there we decided to introduce podcasts into the mix too, so we created a separate section within WP News Desk that caters only for WordPress-related podcasts.
This was done using the normal WordPress post categories. In fact all that was needed here was to create the categories required for the sources we intended to include, and we could then apply them to the various sources individually.
Apply Some Customizations
In order to get the desired behaviour in all areas of the site we used our WP RSS Aggregator filters. These allowed us to make all the imported posts' titles link directly back to the original source. This was always our intention since we wanted the original authors to get all the credit (and traffic) that they deserve.
All it took was adding a filter to the theme's functions.php file, along with another filter that allowed us to remove the Podcasts category from the regular blog and display it in a separate section of the site.
Add the Feed Sources
The final step for WP RSS Aggregator was to add the feed sources, apply the individual settings for each source, occasionally adding a fallback featured image for those sources that don't always include an image within their post's content, and then publish the feed sources to start importing the posts.
That was it for WP RSS Aggregator. The feed sources would now have their latest posts fetched every so often and the WP News Desk blog would continue getting updated for as long as the plugin is running.
Step 2: Add Complimentary Plugins
Besides WP RSS Aggregator we also opted to install a few other plugins that would allow for the smooth running of WP News Desk. First of all, in order to ensure that WordPress, the plugins as well as our themes are kept up to date we installed the Advanced Automatic Updates plugin.
Quick Featured Images is a plugin we use often alongside WP RSS Aggregator as a means of adding a featured image column to the Posts list. This allows us to quickly identify which posts and sources have no featured images set in order to be able to rectify it as quickly as possible.
Since we wanted feedback from our visitors while also giving them a chance to suggest new sources, we opted to install the free Ninja Forms plugin, and it works great. Yoast SEO was then our go-to option to take care of the website's SEO options, and BackupBuddy takes care of performing backups. Last but not least, Jetpackallows us to keep track of our site stats and does a few other minor tasks too.
Step 3: Launch the Site
All that was left now was to launch the site and to start letting the world know about it.
At this point you could be thinking that this might just be a one time job – a set it and forget it kind of site. Well, no, I don't believe any website could be that way.
While we have already curated the sources whose posts are displayed on WP News Desk, it still requires some curation and attention in order to keep it running smoothly and consistently.
- also if you want the specific code here is the link : How to build and Code a news aggregator tool
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