WPTavern had a discussion last week about the huge number of WP developer blogs that have sprung up. At a point, the quantity can overcome the quality and knowing where to look for the top articles and tutorials can be a chore, especially for someone just getting started with WordPress.
As an experiment, I decided to build WPTopics which aggregates from established blogs that are providing useful, influential content on a regular basis. The format is a lot like AllTop, but with a voting plugin that lets the community decide which sources they value most:
(Note: the feeds do cache, but the loading can be a bit slow while they’re being called. I’m still working to find the best way to optimize things)
Ultimately, I’d like to be picky about the feeds displayed and keep the number < 50, but there is also a suggestion form for sites I may have neglected. Obviously the content could be consumed by via RSS reader, but aggregating it publicly and fine-tuning it with voting has its advantages. Again, it's all kind of an experiment.
I'm going to add some more features and design touches in the next few weeks, but until then, I'd love some feedback on how the idea may or may not be useful, what it needs and what it doesn't.
Big thanks to Ben and Bill for helping get the caching and character encoding issues sorted out.
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12:50 pm
Will you release the theme? It looks fantastic.
10:02 pm
Do you mean releasing an aggregator theme? Not sure, it requires a fair amount of custom code and fields, plus a few plugins. I will think about that.
3:20 pm
While I am a big believer in GNU and pro bono, it does pain me when i see hacks of freethemes, being sold for money.. In my opinion, Darren, if you have worked hard, you need to be looking at a consulting angle here.. So hang in there a bit..
12:57 pm
You should run a cron job every 15 minutes to pull in the updates, that way it doesn’t do it when one unlucky visitor happens to be the cache visit. I was able to set up a cron for a similar idea I had, and it wasn’t too difficult.
1:54 pm
Nice! One remark tough: why including wpazo when it is already aggregating content from the other websites you included?
10:04 pm
There may be some redundancy, but WPazo features a lot of stuff not aggregated at WPTopics. Plus, it’s a very good handpicked site by Ian, so it definitely qualifies for what WPTopics is all about.
1:59 pm
Very cool!
2:42 pm
Darren, if you’d like to chat about feed aggregation, just let me know, I run MashedJobs.com which aggregates jobs from quite a few sources around the web, cached every 15 minutes (by cron). I’d love to help out if you feel it would be beneficial.
10:05 pm
Thanks Chris, I may take you up on that.
2:53 pm
Slick! I’ve been running http://themetracker.com for my personal use that covers new themes — very similar to yours. I’ve also added the latest tweet at the top of mine for those blog authors that do use twitter…
10:06 pm
Interesting, I had wondered if similar aggregators were out there. The Twitter idea is great.
3:16 pm
You are pure genius – and it is so awesome that you share it!
This will help me out a ton – since I have gobs of bookmarks and feeds and end up in a chasm of waste sometimes.
10:07 pm
Thanks Lisa! I’m on overload a lot of days keeping up with feeds too, so even if it’s just me using the site a month from now, it will still be worth it.
4:59 pm
Great site Darren. Very easy to use, and everything is organized nicely.
And of course, thanks for including Theme Lab!
11:07 pm
Awesome site. Definitely going to be making use of it. Thanks for building it. I can promise you won’t be the only one using it after a month ;)
5:33 am
Good idea. I was using wpthemesnews.com for themes as well.
5:35 am
The feeds on that site are now display at the footer: http://www.wpthemesnews.com/#feeds
5:04 am
Will certainly be interesting to see how many more personal or open ended WordPress content aggregators spring up. Thanks for placing WPTavern.com as one of the sites featured on this site.
1:14 pm
I have to give it to you the website is looking good. And the aggregator is even better. Thanks
6:41 pm
You should release the theme, there is a market for it.
9:46 am
Great Site, Voting feature is the best
11:20 pm
Hi Darren –
Thanks so much for setting this up. It quickly became my favorite WP news and info aggregator.
I’ve been thinking about setting up an aggregator site for some local topics (not WP) and using WordPress. I’ve looked at just coding something manually using the RSS functions, or a plugin like FeedWordPress but have not decided yet what would be best. I would love it if you released something based on wp-topics but short of that, can you give use some direction in how to best get moving toward creating something similar ourselves. Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
4:40 pm
Thanks Conrad. I’ve actually have a lot of questions and request for this kind of theme. I think once my current project is out of the way, I’ll try to make that happen.
If you were to try your own version, I’d just say that I used custom fields for the URL, Feed URL and favicons and used Posts to publish all the feeds. But, some people have done the same thing using SimplePie which is a great RSS/XML parser. If I had to rethink it, I might consider using it.
10:31 am
Out standing aggregator page for WP. It is one of my primary bookmarks now! Keep up the excellent work, Darren!
12:14 pm
When will this theme be available for purchase/download?
2:47 pm
Ben and I are releasing a new theme in the next week or so, and the RSS/Aggregator theme will be next on my list. I’d love to get it out toward the end of the month.
11:56 pm
I am one who is waiting for this to come out. Are their going to be any new features? I am ready to purchase– I was so close to the another news aggregator that was built in 07, but this I would like to consider. I noticed you mentioned it will be ready at the end of the month. Please confirm and if there will be any new functionality?
Cheers!
11:35 am
It will include all the same custom templates as my other themes (Archives, Contact, etc), plus a couple widgetized areas, localization, seo stuff, search highlighting, animated dropdowns and nav, and a few other bits. I’m also streamlining the design a bit more!
7:11 pm
Okay. I have put off purchasing a competitive product because I believe this has much more potential. I am still assuming this is coming out at the end of the month. We run a Law Journal and we are using this for breaking news.
3:08 pm
Hello Darren, how is the development of the RSS/Aggregator theme coming along.? Any news as to when would it be available for purchase?
7:16 pm
Darren, I am actually willing to be a PAID Beta Tester for this. Please email me if you would consider this.
8:22 pm
LOL.. I just read what I said.. Not only am I will to be PAID, but more importantly, we are willing to PAY. LOL!!
12:46 am
I think it should be free
3:06 am
This is a very interesting idea. I like the design, very clean interface. Would like to see more of it in the future!
6:39 am
nice themes brother, i like it.
10:31 am
How is your webpage made?
2:39 pm
Darren –
Is this theme ready yet? If you recall several months ago we were interested in purchasing this theme. Please let us know.
Blessings,
Mark
6:36 pm
We’re actually wrapping this up right after the holiday. Due to some personal issues and other projects that got shoehorned in front of this one, we waited a bit to release it, but the final touches will be done soon.
12:34 pm
For everyone asking about creating a theme from WPTopics – it is now available!
7:17 am
Nice theme! Will you be releasing the voting plugin? I don’t think the released theme has that?
And if I want to add more features like a subscribe button, tweet button, facebook like button .. where do i do that? Which file should I be modifying?
Thanks!
12:53 am
It uses the WP-Vote plugin and the rest can be done with existing plugins. No plans right now to build all that stuff in.