diy niche building toolsrankspanker serviceniche basic

Integrating Build a Niche Store with a WordPress Autopilot Blog

Whew… that’s about all I have to say about that!

Earlier today, I thought I would try my hand at integrating wordpress with the Hybrid Golf Club site. Overall, the entire process took less than 3 hours, it was the fine tuning of the style sheet to get the WP menus the way I wanted them, that took the most time! You can see it at: Hybrid Golf Club Blog

So, what was involved?

First and foremost – let me say that this is NOT for the faint of heart! I cannot post the mod to this blog because there are so many steps involved, you would get lost! I WILL try to explain what I did and how I got it to work…

  1. I logged into my cPanel and chose Fantastico from the icon menu.
  2. I installed an instance of WordPress and told the system to install it into a separate directory, I chose “/golf-talk/” so there was no way it would get mixed with my bans install.
  3. I went out on the web and found a simple 3-column wordpress template to use as a baseline for the site
  4. Rebuilt the wordpress template to have the same look and feel of the template on the site.
  5. Pulled up public hybrid golf page and from the source code, I copied the left side menu.
  6. Pasted the left side menu into a separate text file, which is called into the wordpress theme on the left side. (This will need to be done every time I update the BANS site menu)
  7. Setup an rsstoblog plugin and imput 2-3 blog feeds into wordpress
  8. Setup a cron job to refresh the rss feed once a day (fresh content)
  9. Started adding categories (only 2 so far) to hold the rss scrapings
  10. Built the WP menu into the right side of the page, colored like the left menu
  11. Added the top header link bar to maintain consistency.
  12. Added the banner bar on top of content for consistency. (Still not completed)

Sat back and watched it work like a charm! Now I will build a few more blog pages with autorss videos, auto scoring in PGA, and roughly 10-15 blog categories all setup with the auto rsstoblog plugin.

Again, I have to tell you that this is not something for the faint of heart or unfamiliar with code. There was quite a bit of work involved. I may offer it as a service to members in the future, I just want to test the crap out of it first!

Mark

Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:

Rate This Post

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading ... Loading ...

About the Author, Mark Hansen

has written 573 article(s) at the Niche Store Builder site.

I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing. 

Latest Readers Who Commented on This Article

9 Comments »

  • Bill said:

    You read my mind. I have been wanting to do this for months. I did a search on the BANS forum for WP and have been collecting info. I think I will try this week. Thanks again Mark

    Reply – Quote
    # 9 March 2008 at 8:00 pm
  • Mik said:

    Hello Mark,
    Can you please tell us how important it is to get this Word Press integration done?
    Thanks,
    Mik

    Reply – Quote
    # 9 March 2008 at 8:29 pm
  • Mark (author) said:

    @ Mik -

    It is just a different way to make the BANS site look more like a daily managed websites. The blog will update the articles every night and thus provide fresh “related” content for each visit of the search spiders and visitors.

    All in all, I wouldn’t say it in the top 5 things you MUST do to succeed with BANS.

    Mark

    Reply – Quote
    # 10 March 2008 at 4:37 pm
  • Scott said:

    Is there a way to import an rss feed to BANS?

    Reply – Quote
    # 10 March 2008 at 4:58 pm
  • Mark (author) said:

    @ Scott -

    There are actually several ways using magpie or different parsing tools.

    I have a method I will discuss here within the next couple weeks.

    Mark

    Reply – Quote
    # 10 March 2008 at 5:05 pm
  • Lyn said:

    Please could you direct us to a suitable theme? I prefer layout 1 left , but it would still be useful to know of a basic 3 col theme. I have used some of andreas, but they look VERY different, and I think would be hard to get to match. It is diffcult to find ones with both horizontal top menus and left nav as well.

    Secondly, please could you recommend an rsstoblog plug in? Preferably not expensive?

    And lastly, why do you need a cron job (and how do you set it up, I think they are very difficult!) when by definition a feed should refresh itself?

    Reply – Quote
    # 10 March 2008 at 5:17 pm
  • Mark (author) said:

    @ Lyn -

    For the themes… first let me say again, if you are not comfortable in html or digging around in the wordpress templates, it is not an easy task.

    I grabbed the one from http://www.freewordpressthemes.com/, but all you want to look for is a theme with the same column layout as your store. (2 or 3 column) If your 2-column store has a menu on the right, choose a similar theme. If you use a 3-column store, with the coumns split on each side of the content, make sure the basic WP theme is the same… essentially, you are NOT using the WP theme for anything more than a basic layout, ALL images, styles, backgrounds, colors etc, must be changed to match your existing bans site. (Thus I say, not for the html weary) Also make sure you get one that has no user requirements… like credits in the footer, most will be code protected.

    For the rsstoblog plugin – do a search for smart-rss, it is a free to use plugin, and highly configurable.

    The plugin actually stores all these articles to the WP mysql database and pulls them to display from there. The cron is run every night to poll the feeds you have setup in the admin and grab new articles based on your search term.

    I will ultimately write an entire section tutorial on this… but it is way too much to get into here. Very technical and detailed.

    Mark

    Reply – Quote
    # 10 March 2008 at 5:51 pm
  • Sean said:

    I setup a couple of autoblogs with WP. I used WpOMatic. I got the RSSFeeds from various sites.

    minicooperautos.com is a reference.

    Reply – Quote
    # 14 March 2008 at 3:19 pm
  • Suzanne of New Affiliate Discoveries said:

    Hi Mark, Great work as always. I recently posted a poll on the BANS forum about this, asking if my site was a “Splog”. I didin’t get much feedback about it, and Shane made the comment that since it’s duplicate content, it will never get anywhere in the SERPS.

    What are your thoughts on this?

    Reference site: http://www.troutitude.com

    Still in the baby stages, I got kind of discouraged with Shane’s comment. Sounds like something I should pursue?

    Reply – http://www.troutitude.com\r\n\r\nStill in the baby stages, I got kind of discouraged with Shane\’s comment. Sounds like something I should pursue?’); return false;”>Quote
    # 15 March 2008 at 4:08 am