Of late, videos have grown in popularity, and more and more websites are now offering video content to their users. You can credit it to the fact that we all have better internet speeds nowadays, or that videos in general are much easier to understand as compared to text content, but the fact remains the same: be it social media or publishing websites, videos have become a popular factor everywhere.

So, is it possible to create video website via WordPress? Of course it is! But are there any special plugins for that? No, not just a plugin that lets you connect with YouTube or share your videos on Facebook, but something that does much more than that. How about a plugin that lets you build an automated video website, and also ensures that your website stays updated with the help of a scheduled import system?

In this post, I will review one such plugin: WP Video Robot.

What is WP Video Robot?

Think of autoblogging; think of video posting; and think of a standalone website that combines both autoblogging and video posting. This is exactly what WP Video Robot promises to deliver.

In other words, it lets you import videos from a variety of channels, and serve them to your website’s viewers. You can schedule imports to happen automatically, and do a lot more with this plugin. Also, owing to the dataFiller feature, the plugin is compatible with virtually every WordPress theme, be it free or premium.

You can connect to multiple video services, such as YouTube, Daily Motion, YouKu, TED and Vimeo, and auto-import videos accordingly. Support for other video services is under development. You can opt for selective videos, curate automatically imported drafts before publishing them, make use of shortcodes to customize the appearance, and so on.

The plugin has been translated into 9 languages. It is being used by over 450 people, and has a 4.67 rating on CodeCanyon.

Much like WooCommerce, WP Video Robot is also backed by a number of free and premium addons that you can use to extend the plugin. For instance, you can make use of the Monetization addon to monetize your website’s videos and make money. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be sharing reviews of some of the most useful addons for WP Video Robot in separate posts on WP Mayor, so stay tuned for that!

That said, now that we are well aware of what WP Video Robot is capable of, let us give it a spin and see how it works!

Using WP Video Robot

After uploading and activating the plugin, you will first need to activate it by entering the purchase code and your email. I had some trouble activating the plugin, because each time I entered the purchase code, it gave a 403 Forbidden error. I contacted the developer of the plugin, and as it turned out, cross-server jQuery AJAX communications were disabled on my server. I tested the plugin on a different server, and everything went smooth.

Right after activation, this plugin adds multiple new sections to your WordPress admin panel: you have the Videos custom post type, the WP Video Robot section, and the WP Video Robot Addons section. The last one is useful only when you add an addon to the plugin, so we will revisit this section over the course of the next few weeks as and when I review the plugin’s addons.

The WP Video Robot section is where all the section happens. As stated above, you get to add video sources, and then fetch videos accordingly. Nothing crazy there, and it is all a smooth ride. You have the option to overlook duplicate videos as well.

Question is, how do you add a source? Head to the Sources–>Add New Source section, and then enter the required info. Basically, you will be selecting the video service, the type of source, and details about the videos you will be fetching and posting. Here is how it looks:

And posting options:

What I was most interested about was the Options section. Most autoposting plugins lack in this area: some insist on adding the posts under the main administrator’s account only, whereas some have no deferring (limit the number of posts) options. In fact, this is why I stay far away from many autoblogging plugins.

That said, WP Video Robot did not disappoint. You can set up deferring settings, default author, post status, post format, and a lot more options from right within the Options section.

It must be noted, though, that player controls work only for YouTube videos. So if you are importing from a custom source, or Vimeo (or, as many autoblogged websites rely on, Daily Motion), you won’t have the luxury to show or hide player controls.

Support and Documentation

When the plugin refused to work on my first test server, I contacted the developer, and he replied within minutes. This was a really impressive service, and I was pleased with the prompt reply.

The documentation is really elaborate, and you have forums, email support, docs as well as videos and tutorials to choose from.

The docs are well organized, and WP Video Robot gets full points for that. Also, new tutorials are being added on a weekly basis.

Special: Opening Discounts

The plugin is currently offering an opening discount of 50% on bundles. All you got to do is use the coupon: WPVRAWESOME50DISCOUNT

And if you purchase 3 addons, an additional discount of 30% will be applied to your order.

Conclusion

WP Video Robot is one of the very few plugins that actually can be useful for autobloggers who seek to add video content to their websites. It works fast, does not act as a memory hog, fetches and implements video posts well, and is backed by good support and detailed documentation.

My only grievance is that you are gonna have to shell out some extra money if you truly wish to do something worthwhile with the plugin, other than embedding YouTube cat videos. For example, much like any other autoblogged website, if you wish to have Google Ads on yours too, you will need the Monetization addon, which costs $24.90. Again, need TED videos? Grab the addon for $34.90

Of course, you cannot have it all in one plugin, but the useful addons are priced too high. Anyone worth their dime would need custom taxonomies and video filters on their site, and having these features outside the plugin as separate paid addons is not something that makes me happy.

Beyond that, there is absolutely nothing to complain about, and WP Video Robot is surely a plugin that you should give a spin if you wish to have videos on your site from multiple sources.

Code Canyon — $36 for one Regular License