Comparing Splog Software

Has anyone taken a hard comparative look at the various splog softwares out there?

• WP AutoBlog
• FeedList
• SmartRSS
• FeedWordPress
• WP O'Matic

I'm using WP AutoBlog on some test sites. It's OK, but I've run into one serious bug.

I'd like to extend one of these packages for a specific requirement I've envisioned, but I'd like to pick the best possible package before I invest time/money into extending one.

I tried WP O'Matic, but it wouldn't even install for me. It's pretty raw.

I haven't tried the others.

Is anyone else here running one of these scripts?

 

I had a friend running SmartRSS, and from the looks of it it worked quite fine and without bugs or errors. Even I've tried WP-Autoblog ..it does post quite fine but it also caused some bugs..and it ultimately lmade my wordpress blog to crash!!

 

I have been testing WP O'Matic, and i think its the best of the bunch.

Good luck

 

Is there any reason why I would pay a programmer to extend SmartRSS or WP O'matic instead of WP Autoblog?

 

What about WPElite, wordpresselite.com? I haven't tried it and would like opinions. It looks like the idea is good as a turnkey way of running many blogs, whether on a splog basis or not, but before I pay the money I'd like a demo or something and they don't offer one.

Any other "splog" software packages that make it easy to administer many different WP installations?

 

If you want to run a massive number of WordPress installations, try WP-Mu.

I got WP O'Matic installed and working. Seems fine now.

 

One of the main developers of Mu has written that it's for users with a good deal of coding knowledge especially regarding LAMP. They specifically said it's not for "someone looking to start a blog farm on a $6.99/month hosting plan" or something to that effect.

Is it really such a technical challenge to set up?

Also, how are you going to be able to actually manage these blogs if you want to post in them and not just feed into them with RSS?

 

I have no idea what he's talking about. WP-Mu installation was pretty much automatic. It was only a few more steps than normal WordPress.

My issues with WP-Mu are that each individual site has fewer configuration items. For example, users can't edit their own templates.

But, if all of the users are you, who cares?

Managing them is easy. You use an admin control panel almost identical to the normal WordPress admin control panel. This one is just multi-user and has fewer options for the owners of individual sites in the network.

 

Ever see this http://www.wpinstaller.com

I have used it in the past (haven't in 2-3 months) it worked ok.

Good luck

 

Hey, that could work a heck of a lot better than the shell script I hacked together!

 

Will, thanks for your reply.

Is it true that with Mu all the blogs have to be on the same server? Also, do you have to log into/click into each blog individually to make posts?

 

I have had good success with FeedWordpress on several blogs. Works nice and if you know a bit of PHP you can customize it more to make it different from the standard install that everyone is using.

 

How does the SE treat you blog? Did you get your traffic from SE or other source?

 

I get a bit but I am not using it for traffic but to get bots to my other sites. It works well for that. Some side adsense income. I suppose if you built 1000's of these across many different sites / class c IP addresses you could make some dough. But that is not my cup of tea for now