Syndicating Your Blog's Content, Republishing Stories from Other Blogs

Link exchanges are one way that bloggers can help promote each other’s work. But another method is reposting stories published on another blogger’s site.

Repost.us provides a free plugin for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs that allows that blog’s posts to be syndicated and republished elsewhere, and permits that blog to repost stories from other sites that have installed the plugin. (Repost.us can be used on other blogging platforms, such as Blogger, which don’t have plugins). For details on how syndication and reposting work, visit Repost.us (www.repost.us).

Go to my site (www.talestoldfromtheroad.com). If you have installed Repost.us on your site, you can republish (for free) any post on my blog that has the Repost button in the upper right-hand corner. (Here’s an example). To see how I have used this WordPress plugin to republish stories that originally appeared elsewhere, click here.

Tags: Syndication, reposting, republication

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 8:18am

Looks very cool. Have installed and would be pleased to have folks repost my articles. steve@stevestravelguide.com

Permalink Reply by Dick Jordan on February 7, 2012 at 11:16am

Steve,

I posted the information about Repost.us.

I tried republishing a couple of your posts (e.g., the one about the Freedom Trail maps). Unfortunately, only the links to maps that you inserted in your posts get republished, not the maps themselves. You should contact Repost.us tech support and see if they can help you figure this out since the maps are a key part of your stories and republishing them without the map doesn't really work.

None of the icons on the share bar show up on republishing. All you get is "Share and enjoy" and them a bullet-list with no bullets.

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 11:40am

My install is not complete. Steps 2 and 3 - I don't know how to do - to paste some code into my sites page template and into the <HEAD> element. I'm not that literate - I looked in the CSS, but it does not seem to be there. Do you know where to place it? BTW, I'm a Studiopress user.

I sent a note to their tech support, but have not heard back.

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 12:23pm

It now says it is complete - could you please retry? Thanks. And do you want me to link to you in my blog?

Permalink Reply by Dick Jordan on February 7, 2012 at 1:04pm

Sorry, Steve. It still doesn't insert the map and the Sharebar is missing.

As far as inserting the map is concerned, perhaps I need to have a WordPress plugin that inserts Google maps. I assume you use such a plugin to create your blog posts. Tell me which you use, I can try installing it, and see if that fixes the problem.

As far as the sharebar is concerned, I'd suggest that you contact Repost.us tech support to see if they can help.

You might also go to my blog (www.talestoldfromtheroad.com) and try reposting one of my posts. You'll probably have to temporarily disable the Visual Editor (go to your User Profile in WordPress to do that) temporarily to get the repost to work. Save the post you create as a draft, then Preview it to see if it works. (If you decide to go ahead with republishing my post, hit Publish).

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 1:20pm

Dick, it now shows up on their site and I think that this is as good as it gets I was told all is ok by their support. My guess is that as Google Maps requires a live link and that repost.us does not support that - this is consistent with my other posts they have now listed. If you want to insert the map directly (don't know that this is possible) the direct link is http://g.co/maps/h7gju I do not use any other plug in to put the maps in my blog.

The share bar also does not show up... there are worse problems in the world.

Does this seem OK?

Am out of the office and will play with reposting one of yours later.

Permalink Reply by Dick Jordan on February 7, 2012 at 1:51pm

Although your article shows up on the Repost.us site, if you try to repost it from there the embedded Google map doesn't show up in the Preview on Repost.us, nor does it show up when the article is actually reposted.

Here's what your Freedom Trail post looks like on my site: http://talestoldfromtheroad.com/2012/02/07/finding-freedom-boston/

I've sent a message to Repost asking if they have a solution to the problem with the map and share bar not displaying.

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 1:54pm

Thanks. Let me know what you find out. I will be back in the office later and will ask them also.

Permalink Reply by Dick Jordan on February 7, 2012 at 3:38pm

Steve,

I think I found the problem.

I didn't have a Google Map plugin for my site. After adding the WP Google Maps plugin, the map embedded in your blog post showed up where it should be.

In addition, the Sharebar text and the empty list of social networking icons no longer appears for some reason.

In other words, your republished post looks just fine now.

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 3:48pm

They also just gave me a beta version of their plug-in, which I just (3 minutes ago) installed. They acknowledged a problem with the plug-in.

Do you want to exchange links?

Permalink Reply by Dick Jordan on February 7, 2012 at 3:58pm

Add a link to your site to my sidebar.

Permalink Reply by Steve Gladstone on February 7, 2012 at 4:08pm

ditto, on the bottom.

Happy travels!

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