First of all please note that both plugins have been created for a different purpose, so it is not really “right” to compare them to each other. WP Robot is for building automatic weblogs and WP Shopping Pages for adding an affiliate store to a blog. Both plugins complement each other and can be used together very well (that’s the way I intended it) – but of course don’t have to: Depending on your goals you might only need one of them. See the table below for a quick summary of the main features and differences between the two plugins:

Feel free to leave a comment if you have more questions.

When building many autoblogs how much time you need to set up each new blog from scratch is a very important factor. A good way to safe some times on the way is to pre-configure the options of WP Robot in order to prevent you from having to enter the same details for each autoblog. Editing the default options is actually quite simple, here is what you have to do:

1. Open the file mainstall.php (from your WPRobot folder) in a text editor.
2. Scroll to line 61. This is where the default options are specified, ordered by module. Each option consists of a line looking like this: add_option( ‘ma_eb_affkey’, ” ); Important is the part in the brackets: The first part is the name of the option (here ma_eb_affkey, which is the eBay affiliate ID) and the second part (here ” = empty) is the default value of the option.
3. Change the line 77 from add_option( ‘ma_eb_affkey’, ” ); to add_option( ‘ma_eb_affkey’, ‘youraffid’ );
4. Safe the file.

That’s it. After that change your eBay affiliate ID will now automatically be populated with the value you entered after installing WP Robot on a new blog. Of course you call also change the default values of all other options, some important ones are:

add_option(”ma_yap_appkey”,”");  -  Yahoo Application ID, line 86

add_option(’ma_aa_apikey’,”");  -  Amazon Affiliate Key, line 93
add_option(’ma_aa_secretkey’,”"); -  Amazon API Key, line 94
add_option(’ma_aa_skip’,”");  -  Amazon Secret Key, line 95

add_option(’ma_cb_affkey’,”);-  Clickbank Affiliate Key, line 105

Of course, be sure to only edit an option if you know for certain what it does and what you have to enter in the value field!

The program pays 35% commission on any sale of WP Robot refered by you. Go here for more information on the WP Robot affiliate program or sign up through this link directly.

1. You can now use {auction:x} (replace x with a number!) inside any other template option in order to insert x eBay auctions into every post, instead of just one like previously.  So if you add {auction:3} to the end of the Amazon module’s template option each Amazon product post will contain three eBay auctions at the end. You do need to have the eBay module installed for this to work.
2. Use {image:keyword} (”keyword” being any keyword of your choice) in your templates to add an image about keyword to your posts – instead of an image about the keyword the post was made for when you only use {image}. This can be especially useful if you have a niche site with very targeted keywords for which no images exist on Flickr. Say, there were no images on Flickr for “red dog collar” (can’t think of a good example right now). You could then use {image:dog} to simply display generic images of dogs in your posts. You do need to have the Flickr module installed for this to work.

Exception: RSS Module

Since the RSS module has no keywords associated with it, the MIX feature works slightly different for it:

• Using {image} won’t work. You have to use {image:keyword}
• Using {auction} or {auction:x} won’t work, you have to use {auction:keyword}

1. Amazon Template

This template incorporates all tags of the Amazon module plus 2 eBay auctions at the bottom to give visitors an alternative.

{thumbnail}
{features}
{description}

Price: {price}
Rating: {avgrating} ({noreviews} reviews)

{link}
Or have a look at these auctions on eBay:
{auction:2}

2. Article Template

An image added in at the top to spice up the content and two ebay auctions at the bottom of the article for monetization.

{image}
{article}
{authorbox}
{auction:2}

3. Yahoo Answers Template

A Flickr thumbnail to go with the question…

{image}
{question}

For the other modules I do mainly use the default templates.

Some general Tips:

• You can use the Wordpress <!–more–> tag in WP Robot to split up your posts. You could for example first display the Youtube thumbnail and description and have your visitors click the “more” link to see the video.
• You can also use tags and shortcode of 3rd party plugins in your templates. See this post for details.

Important: If you enable link cloaking without editing the .htaccess file none of your affiliate links will work!

Please note you will need a little knowledge of how to modify and upload files on your webserver via FTP to make this work, which is why I only recommend using cloaking for advanced users!

Ok, that said, lets get started:

1. Enable link cloaking in the options.

This one is easy:  Go to your WP Robot options page, check “Cloak Affiliate Links” and save the options.

Links to Amazon, Ebay (except in RSS feeds) and Clickbank should now look something like this on your blog:  http://yourdomain.com/go/Link_Title/2021/1. Those links will not work yet though!

2. Insert Code into the .htaccess file

Wordpress can insert the necessary code into the .htaccess file itself as long as it is writeable (which it should be if you already set up permalink rules for your blog – which you should do!). To update the file go to “Settings” > “Permalinks” in your Wordpress admin area and just click on “Save Settings” (you don’t have to change anything on the page).

If it worked you will see this message and can continue with step 3:

If it didn’t work it is probably because your .htaccess file is not writeable. In that case you will also be told so by Wordpress on the “Permalinks” page. To fix that you can either set permission to make the .htaccess file writeable or use your FTP program to update the file yourself.

If you want to insert the code yourself, this is the full code that has to be on top of the .htaccess file:

# WP Robot Link Cloaking START
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^go/([^/]*)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ http://YOURDOMAIN.com/wp-content/plugins/WPRobot3/cloak.php?post_id=$2&link_num=$3&cloaked_url=$0 [L]
RewriteRule ^go/([^/]+)[/]?$ http://YOURDOMAIN.com/wp-content/plugins/WPRobot3/cloak.php?name=$1&cloaked_url=$0 [L]
</IfModule>
# WP Robot Link Cloaking END

Be sure to replace the YOURDOMAIN part with your actual domain name!

3. Move the WP Robot link cloaking rules to the top of the .htaccess file.

Wordpress can automatically insert the necessary redirection rules but unfortunatelly it can not automatically move them to the top of the .htaccess file – and that is where they need to be! So check your links now and if they do not work yet you will have to edit your .htaccess file and move the rules to the top. To do that follow the following steps:

• Download the .htaccess file to your computer with a FTP program. You can find the .htaccess file in your blogs main directory. See this link for more details on how to find your .htaccess file if necessary.
• Open the file with any text editor of your choice.
• Look for the lines that read “# WP Robot Link Cloaking START” and “# WP Robot Link Cloaking END” inside the file. Move those two lines with everything between them to the very top of the file. (If you can’t find the lines just insert the code you find in section 2 above into the file at the top.)
• Save your changes and upload the file to your weblog again via FTP. Make sure you overwrite and replace the old file!

Please Note:

• Affiliate links to Clickbank, eBay and Amazon will be cloaked in all posts on your blog, not only in posts created by WP Robot.

You can also combine the 3rd party tags with WP Robot’s built in template tags. I.e. you could use the {keyword} tag of WP Robot to enter the keyword of the specific post into the other pugin’s tag.