How to Set Up a Custom Content Curation Site With WordPress

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Automated content curation may save you a significant amount of time with creating and publishing content on your site but is it really worth it from a marketing standpoint? In this post, we'll show you how you can set up a custom content curation site.
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In a content-driven landscape, it’s important that you deliver high-quality content to your viewership day after day. It may be easy in the first few days after you launch your website but in the long run, it becomes quite daunting — especially if you don’t have a team of writers or the budget for publishing good content regularly.

One way to make your way around this is to set up a custom content curation site. It improves your site’s SEO, helps you establish credibility, and supports lead generation. And with the right tools, you can put your own spin on it and become a thought leader in your niche. In this post, we’ll show you how you can create a custom content curation site with WordPress.

Let’s put everything into context before we begin.

Why Content Curation Is a Good Idea

Curating quality content that delivers value to your target audience is incredibly beneficial for both you and your online business. Contrary to popular belief, curating content from various sources and aggregating it on your website doesn’t affect your SEO or the source site’s SEO negatively. In fact, content curation can help you grow your business in several ways:

Automated content curation may save you a significant amount of time with creating and publishing content on your site but is it really worth it from a marketing standpoint? The short answer is not really. Most RSS aggregation tools don’t allow users to add their own commentary on the imported posts and giving a stamp of approval to everything you find on the Internet isn’t always in your best interests.

The solution to this is to use an aggregation tool that allows you to modify the content prior to publishing. Sometimes, modifying the post’s content or putting your own spin on its excerpt is a great way of clarifying what each post is about and drawing in the reader’s attention. Instead of opting for a fully automatic RSS tool, one that promotes manual curation enables website owners to handpick which posts to publish, which to modify, and which to leave out.

Custom Curation With WP RSS Aggregator

WP RSS Aggregator

WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer for WordPress that allows users to import, merge, and display RSS and Atom feeds on their WordPress site. The plugin’s support for shortcodes enables webmasters to display the imported feeds in various formats.

Although WP RSS Aggregator is an auto blogging platform, its premium add-on, Feed to Post, allows users to import the posts as drafts and then modify them however they see fit before publishing. Users are able to make modifications to the post’s title, content, and featured image.

With the free version of WP RSS Aggregator, users can aggregate as many feeds from as many sources as they’d like. And when you’re ready to take things further you can purchase any number of the eight premium add-ons that enhance its functionality or go for one of the two add-ons bundles.

Setting Up a Custom Content Curation Site

One of the best things about curating content is that it isn’t restricted to a particular niche or type of website. Though most people tend to think that the best use for content curation is to create a site like WP News Desk, that’s not always true. In fact, by the curating content, you can create any type of site from the latest in sports to political updates and weather watches to upcoming events in your local community.

Step 1: Installing WP RSS Aggregator and Configuring the Settings

To kick things off, install and activate the core WP RSS Aggregator plugin by navigating to Plugins > Add New from the admin panel. For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Feed to Post add-on which enables users to manually curate the imported feed items before they are published since they are imported as posts.

Be sure to activate its license by heading over to RSS Aggregator > Settings > Licenses from the WordPress dashboard after activating it.

Activate license.
Activate the add-on’s license.

Head over to RSS Aggregator > Settings > General to configure WP RSS Aggregator’s settings. We recommend that you use the settings we’ve provided in the screenshot below.

General Settings screen.
WP RSS Aggregator’s General settings.

Now, head over to the Feed to Post tab from the WP RSS Aggregator Settings screen to configure the settings for the imported feed items.

Settings screen.
Feed to Post settings screen.

We’ve imported the feed items with a Post Status of Draft. Doing so allows you to make modifications to the post’s title, content, and featured image before you publish it to our website and manually root out any unwanted posts.

Step 2: Adding Feed Sources

Once you’ve configured the plugin’s General settings and the Feed to Post settings it’s time to start adding the feed sources you’d like to import feed items from. For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll create a custom medical news site.

Step 1: Navigate to RSS Aggregator > Add New from the admin panel.

Step 2: Add in the new feed source’s title.

Step 3: Enter the Feed Source Details:

Feed Source Details.
Add a new feed source by entering the Feed Source Details.
  • The URL determines the feed source.
  • Limit allows you to specify how many posts you’d like to import at a time.
  • Select Link to enclosure if you’d like the feed items to link to the URL in the enclosure tag.
  • Tick the Unique titles only box if you only want to display feed items with unique titles.

Step 4: Validate the feed source by clicking the Validate feed link. If the URL is valid, continue to the next step otherwise search for a valid RSS feed.

Check validity of feed source.
Make sure the feed source’s URL is valid.

Step 5: Click the Publish Feed button to continue.

Once you click the Publish Feed button, WP RSS Aggregator will begin importing feed items from the feed source. In order to add more feed sources to import content from, all you have to do is repeat Step 1 to Step 5.

Feed sources screen.
Add as many feed sources as you’d like.

Step 3: Modifying the Imported Posts

If you head over to Posts > All Posts from your site’s admin panel, you’ll notice that the feed items have been imported directly as posts and are saved as drafts (based on our configuration settings).

Posts screen.
Feed items are imported directly as posts.

By opening up a post, you can modify the post’s title, content, and featured image before publishing it to your medical news website. In addition to this, you can also decide which posts to not publish.

Edit Post screen.
Modify the post’s content before publishing it.

When you’re done editing it, you can hit the Publish button to publish it to your site. However, if you don’t want to publish the post at all, simply click the Move to Trash link.

Post title modified.
Preview of a modified post.

Step 4: Launching Your Site

Here’s a preview of the medical news site once you’ve published the posts.

Preview of the final site.
Here’s a preview of the final site.

Wrapping It Up

Curating quality content from high authority sources and putting your own spin on it gives you more control over what’s being published on your website and allows you to establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche. WP RSS Aggregator paired with the Feed to Post add-on enables website owners to curate their very own website in a few simple steps:

  1. Install the WP RSS Aggregator plugin with its Feed to Post add-on and configure its settings.
  2. Add the feed sources you’d like to import content from.
  3. Modify the content however you see fit and choose which posts to publish and which to leave out.
  4. Launch your news aggregation website!

Do you have any questions about how to set up a custom content curation site? We’d love to hear all about your experience so let us know by commenting below!

Rafay Saeed Ansari

Rafay is an entrepreneur, computer scientist, professional writer for several high-traffic websites, and founder of Blogginc. He provides byline and ghost-writing services for digital and brick-and-mortar businesses with a focus on web development, WordPress, and entrepreneurship.

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2 Responses

  1. Excellent .. Amazing .. I’ll bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…I’m happy to find so many useful info here in the post, we need work out more techniques in this regard, thanks for sharing.

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