BlogPiG plugins now update automatically!

The auto-update feature of BlogPiG plugins was introduced just recently so that the process of updating to the latest versions of our products is much easier for you!

Plugins that now have the this feature are:

• CloakPiG 2.2
• CommentPiG 2.1.5
• CSVPiG 2.4.12
• TagPiG 2.2.7

How This Affects You

We’re updating our products all the time based on your feedback so take a moment to read the information below on how you can upgrade your product versions in a couple of clicks:

Update notifications will be visible in the admin sidebar (Updates, Plugins) as well as in the Plugins list table.

Users can then view info about the latest version and can perform the update from within WP-admin.

The update is performed by WP via FTP. The user is then required to enter her/his credentials (for her/his FTP server).

Users should note that that when entering information into the “Hostname” field (on the FTP credentials page), they should enter “localhost” (not the domain name).

Below are some screen grabs to illustrate the update notifications:

Update Notification in Plugins List Table

Update Notifications in Sidebar and Updates Page

Status Box in BlogPiG Plugin with Auto-update Feature

Plugin Info Modal Window

FTP Credentials Page

- WYSIWYG Template Designer
- Parent/child categories
- new date, author, attachment & excerpt fields in the template designer
- Import CSV file from a URL
- Control CSVPiG remotely via cron jobs

Partner Program Launched

We’ve also launched are shiny new partner program in association with ClickBank. You can earn 50% commission on any sales of our products via your links. You can generate your own personal links to any page on the site HERE

Existing non-ClickBank partners should update their links to the new format as soon as possible.

New Help Desk is Live

After a few problems recently we’ve finished the move to our new helpdesk, it’s much simpler to use and you can even chat with other BlogPiG member’s, we’ll be publishing more FAQs over the coming weeks. Helpdesk is HERE

ClickPiG Slips Out

Finally we quietly launched and brand new product this week too, it’s called ClickPiG and it’s a hoplink manager for ClickBank vendors, you can:

- Cloak your payment links
- Cloak your affiliates’ hoplinks
- Let your affiliates send clicks to any page on your site
- Get full credit for all the backlinks your affiliates create

There is short (3 minute) video that explains everything about ClickPiG HERE

We’re using ClickPiG ourselves on the BlogPiG partner page so you can see it in action and try it out live.

CommentPiG update next week.

All the best.

Gary, Fiona & Alex
Your BlogPiG Team

Great news, we’ve just uploaded CSVPiG 2.2 to the BlogPiG members’ area! You should download it straight away and get it activated on your blogs.

Here’s the download link

We’ve also updated the User Guide which is available inside your members’ area.

Some of the new features will only be available if you have a CSVPiG Pro license – you can always upgrade inside the BlogPiG members’ area.

So what’s New in CSVPiG 2.2?

1. Well, along with all the usual tweaks and fixes we’ve added a great new feature that allows you to update existing posts with a new CSV import. You get to choose which unique field CSVPiG uses to match existing posts. We recommend using the post slug but you can use any unique field that you’ve included as a custom field, for example, ID number. To illustrate the benefit: this means that you could upload a thousand products from a golf merchant datafeed and then if in the future that merchant decides to drop their prices by 10% all you would have to do is upload the new datafeed and CVSPiG automatically alters ONLY the pricing information on all your published & scheduled posts. This feature was requested by CSVPiG Pro user Tod.

2. The Post Template Designer’s ‘drag & drop’ functionality now works in ALL browsers – previously only Firefox users had access to this slick system.

3. You can now import CSV files without column headers – your tokens in the Post Template Designer will simply be numbers rather than actual header text.

4. In addition you can also specify any field separator you want before uploading your CSV files. Are Clickbank datafeeds using pipe delimiters rather than commas? Not a problem, just enter the delimiter and CSVPiG takes care of the rest.

If you have feedback about any of the new features you can leave a comment below.

What’s next?

Development is really picking up pace here at BlogPiG and we have new releases of TagPiG & CommentPiG ready to go. Please don’t forget we’re a Community Driven Development company – you ask and we build (as long as we agree it’s a good idea of course!). The best place to discuss new ideas is in the support forums, so head on over and tell us want you want to see next.

What is CSVPiG?

CSVPiG is an affiliate datafeed import plugin for WordPress. You can read all about CSVPiG and download a free copy HERE. Don’t forget you’ll need your BlogPiG API key from the members’ area.

I just give you a quick a run through of the latest Post Templates feature available in CSVPiG Pro. We think it’s pretty nice!

With CSVPiG Pro you can import any number of columns and you do not need to specify any particular column headers.

Instead everything is controlled after uploading by mapping column headers to particular WordPress content elements.

Click on the add new template link in the Post Templates section

Assuming you have already uploaded your CSV file you will see a list of the available tokens which can be used to design your post template. These are the column headers of your CSV file.

You can drag and drop these tokens into any of the WordPress content elements you wish. For instance you can drag %title% into the Title field etc.

Title – the title of the WordPress post

Slug – the string that is used when displaying the URL of the post. You can import your own separate column for custom post slugs. I usually just use the title token. If you do decide to use custom post slugs try to focus on the keywords that are used on popular search queries, and remember that the fewer keywords you use, the higher their relative value.

Post – the main content body of your WordPress post. You can put any HTML or CSS you want in this area and then drag and drop the tokens into the appropriate places. Here’s an example of a typical post:

<h3>Movie review</h3>

%body%

<ul>
<li>Format: %media%</li>
<li>Rating: %rating%</li>
</ul>

Download this movie instantly from <a href=”%aff_link%”>NetFlix</a> now!

You can include any markup you want inside the post template, images, css styles, bullets etc. Anything you can include in the usual WordPress HMTL post editor.

Category – the categories you want assigned to the post, multiple categories should be separated by commas in the CSV file. When saving as a CSV Excel will automatically enclose that whole field with quotes so the commas inside are not confused for field separators

Tags – the tags you assigned to the post, multiple tags should be separated by commas in the CSV file. When saving as a CSV Excel will enclose that whole field with quotes so the commas inside are not confused for field separators

Custom Fields – you can map any remaining columns to custom fields in blog posts. Custom fields are an extremely powerful feature of WordPress enabling you to include a lot of additional content within your posts. The basic guide to custom fields can be read here http://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Fields . I often use custom fields to store product specific data such as price or id and of course my actual affiliate link. There are a variety of free WordPress plugins that can then be used to include the content of particular custom fields inside your posts automatically, often in a header or footer to each post. You should drag your chosen token into the value field and choose a name for each new custom field. If you need more custom fields simply click the add custom field link to add more.

You can create and save as many templates as you want. Once you’re happy with your template you should save it and then choose that particular template in the Publish section below.

More awesome features coming very soon!

The new features only apply to the Pro Version but the Free version should be updated too.

• Brand new post templating option replaces column mapping, now just paste tokens into the WP content elements you want. Post Content areas can contain tokens and HTML!
• Clone settings now includes your BlogPiG API key so that CSVPiG is ready to run with all your custom settings as soon as the plugin is activated
• You can now use commas inside text delimeters in the header row e.g. column1,column2,”column2,b”,column3
• CSVPiG now keeps the case of column headers (previously it changed headers to lowercase)

The last two features were added as a result of user requests.

Please don’t forget we’re a community driven development company. We build features and product that YOU ask for! So don’t be shy drop us a note with anything you think will help you work faster and make you more money.

You can download the updates of CSVPiG Pro & Free inside the BlogPiG members’ area.

CSVPiG Free can also use the auto plugin update in WP Admin.

More features coming soon.

This plugin forms the core of my autoblog business, I use it for every single blog I build, it really is an essential bit of kit.

With CSVPiG Pro you can:

• Unlock unlimited sources of free high quality content
• Import thousands of content rich posts to your blog easily & quickly
• Schedule those posts to appear naturally over time so search engines come back day after day
• Build automated blogs that last for years with no further intervention from you
• Even clone your custom settings across all the blogs in your network

Watch our 2 min CSVPiG Pro video promo here.

CSV feeds are a blog builders dream, imagine thousands of rows of content from every niche you can imagine just waiting to be imported and monetised on your blogs.

You can install any CSV file, with unlimited rows and unlimited columns, columns can have any headers and even be in any order! It doesn’t matter which affiliate network or merchant you’re downloading datafeeds from, CSVPiG Pro can import any of them.

Here are the basic steps:

• Download a CSV affiliate data feed from CJ, Buy.at, Sharesale etc.
• Upload the CSV file using CSVPiG
• Schedule the number of new posts you would like auto-posted per day
• Map the CSV column headers to the WordPress content elements such as title, post, categories, tags
• Publish the CSV file with one click

CSVPiG Pro is available as an instant download from the BlogPiG.com Members’ area. Here’s what is included:

• An unlimited license to use CSVPiG on as many sites as you own
• Free CSVPiG updates for life
• A comprehensive PDF user guide
• Full support from the BlogPiG team & community

CSVPiG is available in 2 versions – Free & Pro. The Free version is okay for small projects or just dumping CSV files into a WordPress blog. For serious power users we highly recommend CSVPiG Pro so you can really take full advantage of every advanced feature e.g. scheduling, mapping, ftp upload & cloning etc.

Watch our 2 min CSVPiG Pro video promo here.

We’ve just released a new update of CSVPiG to the WordPress Plugin Repository. This is Version 2.0.0.796

The key changes are listed below:

• Removed the ‘Disable Post Publishing’ check box
• Added a ‘Post Status’ drop-down box with the following options: Published, Pending Review, Draft and None
• Adjusted the initial settings file and some log messages

So now you can choose whether to import you posts as live posts or keep them as drafts for publishing later.

You can now enter multiple categories into the ‘category’ field of your import CSV file e.g.:

• Entering ‘products,wordpress plugins,csvpig’ into the category field would result in the post appearing in 3 categories
• Entering just ‘csvpig’ into the category field would result in the post appearing in just the child category

You don’t need to update your CSVPiG if you’ve already done it recently as this feature is already built in, we just forgot to document it! I’ll be adding it to user guide shortly.

If you don’t already have CSVPiG you can download it here:

CSVPiG is a bulk import plugin for WordPress.

CSVPiG has been designed to allow fast and flexible import of multiple posts from a CSV file directly into your blog. You can either upload a CSV file using the UI on the admin page, or you can process an already uploaded file on the server. You can even process multiple uploaded files sequentially.