Getting Started With SteemPress

in #steempress6 years ago (edited)

SteemPress is a WordPress plugin by @howo and @fredrikaa that makes it easy to post to WordPress and Steem simultaneously. Just publish your post to WordPress as usual, and it automatically gets added to Steem too.

While the authors are working on getting it added to the WordPress Plugin Directory, you'll have to install it manually for now. Not to fear, it's actually pretty easy!

Install

  • Download the plugin from the Github page. You'll want to click the green "Clone or download" button, then hit "Download ZIP". Save this file wherever you like.

DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121183317.png

  • Navigate to your WordPress admin dashboard and sign in. The URL is usually in the form yoursite.com/wp-admin. If you're already logged in, you can just visit your site and use the link from the admin bar at the top:

DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121183719.png

  • Click "Plugins" in the left sidebar and then press "Add New".

DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121183935.png

  • Then press "Upload Plugin" (button is right where "Add New" used to be), and select the zip file we downloaded in the first step.

  • Once the upload is complete, you'll see a link that says "Activate plugin". Press that, and you're done. Nice!

Setup

We'll need to give SteemPress some information about our Steem account in order for it to make posts to the Steem blockchain with your account. To set this up, visit the plugin's setting page. Select "Plugins" from the left sidebar again, then scroll down til you find SteemPress and follow the "Settings" link.

DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121190400.png

Now you'll see three fields: Steem username, posting key, and default tags. The Steem username is just as it sounds, whatever you use to sign in to Steemit and other Steem services (no "@" symbol). Your posting key can be found in your wallet on Steemit. Click your avatar photo, then select wallet, and go to the permissions tab:

DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121191000.png

The first line will be for your posting key. Press the button on the right side that says "Show Private Key", then copy the string of text into the appropriate field of the SteemPress settings. Don't worry, this will only be stored on the server your site is hosted on.

DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121191251.png

Finally, choose your tags. These will be automatically added to any posts you make to Steem using SteemPress. When you're finished, hit the blue "Save all changes" button.

Usage

Ok, we're ready to make a post to WordPress and Steem, at the same time! This is actually the really easy part. Just publish your post on WordPress, and it'll automatically show up on Steem too.


DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20180121192732.png


That worked like a charm. Yay!

Wrapping Up

Finally, there are a few things to note about the plugin's functionality at the moment:

  1. Any post that you make to WordPress will be mirrored to Steem. Since there's no way to delete a post from Steem, be sure before you hit the publish button
  2. SteemPress will automatically self upvote your posts
  3. There's no way to repost your old WordPress blogs to Steem

Hope this was helpful! Please drop any questions into the comments. The SteemPress team would love your help with testing and building the plugin. See their introduction post for details.

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This is great, I think this can literally begin a new chapter in steemit adoption!

Yea, nice idea.

im trying to do this on wordpress, but its not giving me a settings optionScreen Shot 2018-01-26 at 1.48.33 AM.png

Hmmm, try selecting Setting in your left sidebar, then look for a SteemPress option below that in the list.

got it, was on the wrong wordpress link, thank you!

Glad you figured it out!

So is that correct currently there is no way from WordPress to disable on a post level? "Any post you make to WordPress will be mirrored to Steem." Do we still have the issue of even if you select not to publish on Steem, it did it anyway?

That is correct, for now. Per post controls including tagging are planned for v1, which is in development.

Activating and deactivating the plugin as needed is clunky, but could be done.

Ok. This will be awesome to have in v1. Thank you.

V1 is available now from the WP plugin directory. See the announcement here.

@scottyeager - Tremendous job done by you! I will check the plugin on our websites.
Question: Whenever I copy-paste my content from my wordpress blog to Steemit, Cheetah bot sends me a notification. And that affects reputation.
Do you think Cheetah bot will be ok to have content clone coming through the plugin?

Thanks! The developers deserve most of the credit—I just wrote the guide :)

There have been questions about Cheetah by others (my WordPress site doesn't actually show blog posts, so I haven't had this problem). You might be able to find some answers in the comments of the original post.

One suggestion was including links back and forth between the two copies, to prove it's not plagiarism. It actually looks like you can be added to a Cheetah Bot white list if you're doing that. See this post.

Thank you so much @scottyeager for this blog and instructional on how to install the Steempress plugin on wordpress. I did it successfully and it sync'd on the first try. I am very impressed and excited, I gave you a shout out credit/ tag in my post. Thanks again

https://steemit.com/asher/@asherunderwood/steempressplugintesting123asherunderwoodcom-gn3p9zm806

Post on my website: https://asherunderwood.com/steempress/

Happy to help! Thanks for the mention!

I read the announcement post and in time there will be a way to publish old posts on Steemit. I downloaded using your guide so thank you!

Yes, many cool features are planned for future versions! Glad to hear I could help you get started with SteemPress.

This is a great idea! I have a WP site and know enough to make posts. I will try this and see if this old dude can figure it out. :) About the old posts, what if I went back and just reset the publication date and time? It publishes on WP as a new post, at least as far as I can tell. @scottyeager Peace

This initiative is going to take steem to a different level. This will not only create a pathway for wordpress users but this will also provide an idea for other platform users to start adopting Steemit.

Same bug as other users. Error message "cannot connect to steem server".

cURL is installed. Newest version of wordpress.

Thanks for the report. It seems that the outbound connections are being blocked by some hosts (could also be WordPress config). The devs have a fix coming for this in the next version.

So many use cases popping up on top of the Steemit blockchain! This is soooo exciting! I've entered a new world that's changing my life as a music creator - finally being able to monetize my music. I can't say how grateful I am for this!

Yep, the ecosystem effect here is really impressive. Especially with Utopian rewarding folks for building projects like this, there's so much potential!

It's awesome! I can't wrap my head around Utopian yet... I guess it's more for programmers. But it's fantastic that it provides this opportunity!

Utopian is a little confusing at first, and it is targeted as developers and others who contribute to open source projects.

The basic idea is that users submit contributions to Utopian documenting what they've done for open source. They have a team of moderators who approve submissions. Once a submission is approved, it gets upvoted some amount by the Utopian account, which has a large amount of Steem Power, and other users who support the project.

Nice addition to the WP community bloggers.
I look at it also as part of the campaign publicity.

Agreed. Getting integrated with the biggest blogging engine on the planet should help Steem grow!

@howo just read about it on the blog of @howo , it seems that it would be very helpful

That's the idea!

This is exactly what I needed and wanted without thinking about it. Steem is on point with these plugins for creating a network. Keep it up, will be helping with feedback and testing.

Yep, lots of cool projects around here, and I'm glad I found this one!

I don´t understand this line in: /admin/class-sp-admin.php

wp_remote_post("http://steemtutorial.com:81/", $data);

Why steemtutorial.com?

It's just a spare domain name that we have and I use it to correctly redirect things onto our server (because it also serves other content). Also in the future you'll see the link between this domain and steempress ;)

So... that web is processing post vars like bridge?

The plugin gets all the important informations and sends them to our server which is connected with the steem blockchain and who will do the posting.

We can't connect directly to the steem blockchain via the plugin because php's vanilla cryptography is not evolved enough to create steem transactions.

I will install it on wordpress.

creative people always do creative work, thanks man you solve my problem

steem_success.jpg

This is exactly what I was looking for. I think this plugin will contribute heavily to the diffusion of steem among bloggers.

That's just what I was thinking when I found this project! The dream is for full two way integration between Steem and WordPress, which I think would be huge for adoption.

This looks fantastic, I'll be installing on my music blog and will let you know how I get on. It seems a great way to schedule posts on Steemit, which I've been looking for also!

I've installed the plugin and I'm getting the following message:
Connectivity to the steem server : Connection error
Most likely your host isn't letting the plugin reach our steem server.

Me too.

Try out V1, available now from the WP plugin directory. See the announcement here.

SteemPress transmits your WordPress post via an html POST command, which appears to require curl. This may require some combination of having your host install curl and configuring WordPress to allow it. Not exactly a walk in the park.

It is possible that this won't be a requirement in the future.

cURL is installed on my server and I still get the same error.

Try out V1, available now from the WP plugin directory. See the announcement here.

After looking ito it, it's a limitation by your shared server which won't let you connect in some specific ways, it should be fixed for the v1 :)

Try out V1, available now from the WP plugin directory. See the announcement here.

I have Wordpress set up to post with Markdown. Is that going to cause any issues, considering this plugin converts posts to Markdown already?

SteemPress works on the html that WordPress spits out, so I don't think this should be a problem.

And in any case, if wordpress spits out markdown, it just won't get converted :)

Good to know. Thanks guys!

Hey! Can I translate this guide to Hebrew for our Israel community? I'm sure they will enjoy this!
Thanks in advance.

That's fine with me! Feel free to grab the images and let me know if I can assist in any way.

Are you working on a way to just use the steemit blockchain in the backend? Kind of like when you go to a branded medium page? The duplicate content is a bummer.

There's a lot of interest in embedding Steem's content and features into WordPress sites. That's the idea that originally had me excited when I found this project. The developers of SteemPress have said that's part of the plan, so hopefully coming soon!

Steempress who does duplicates is the first step, we are working on making it completely embedded :)

thanks for the tutorial, in my case it does not work :-( do you put the user name like "user" or "@user" in the corresponding field?

Thanks for the question. I have clarified this in the guide. Sorry to hear it's still not working!

Put the user as "user"

Are you sure that you set the private posting key and not the public posting key ?

i used the private posting key and username without "@" but it does not work.

Mmmmmhhh that's very very weird, can you check if there are some leading or trailing spaces ?

Other than that, perhaps your server security prevents you to contact the server that does the posting on steem.

hmm still no luck, i think its probably a server issue. i will try to sort it out. testing from a different machine.

Any luck? Checking into things, SteemPress needs to be able to make an html POST with curl in order to push your post over to Steem. Not every host and WordPress config makes that possible.

i ll let you know. hadnt had time yet to try

Hello @scotty,
I'm facing this :
Connectivity to the steem server : Connection error

Any idea ?

Looks like you're not the only one. Check out my comment here.

Try out V1, available now from the WP plugin directory. See the announcement here.

What a great plugin. This is exactly what I am looking for. Thanks for your instruction how to install the SteemPress plugin. Have a good evening!

My pleasure!

Thanks for this post. Its a big help on noobs like me who don't know yet what to do how to earn money here. I just signed up and struggling how to get started to earn some money here.So your post is really in deed a great help.

Sure thing! If you're looking for tips, check out my post How to Be a Minnow, where I share some lessons from my time here.

I will try this out tomorrow!

Cool! Please let me know if anything doesn't make sense.

@scottyeager, I need to upgrade my Wordpress plan if I want to add a plugin.

At this time I am not interested in investing any money, even if it is only $4 dollars. Too bad Wordpress won't take SBD lololol, I would upgrade for sure!

Ah, gotcha. There might be some web host out there that takes crypto, but SBD is probably a long shot :) Someday, everybody will accept crypto and swapping between them will be seamless. Hopefully that's someday soon!

Very cool, is there an option so you can just publish a custom excerpt to Steemit so you don't have to worry about duplicate content?

At this point, functionality is pretty basic; it just copies any post you make on WordPress into Steem. I'll note this for the feature wishlist.

Okay I see, yeah great work so far, would definitely need to protect posts from getting duplicated verbatim to Steemit posts for most sites that are search engine conscious but nonetheless a great idea and I'm sure will be practical in time.

Keep up the good work Scotty.

Gotta give credit where credit is due: @howo and @fredrikaa built this thing. I just wrote the guide :)

Ah, all good! Good work regardless!

+1 that, it's a great guide :)

Thanks! I will keep it up for sure :)

this is not working

Where are you getting stuck?

V1 is available now from the WP plugin directory. See the announcement here.

Interesting plugin! Will try this 😎

Aaah sorry @scottyeager I didnt' notice people were asking questions here !

No worries! Thanks for chiming in.

i updated your guide with the direct installation via wordpress plugin directory and wrote a translation in german:

https://steemit.com/deutsch/@deineip/tutorialsteempressinstallationundnutzung-ynzpn1ettq

Looks great! It's been a while since my German classes, but I was able to get the gist of it :)

@scottyeager It worked. I tried to change the publish date on WP but it did not publish to Steemit. But what did work is simply recreating the old post with copy and paste. It only took and minute or two. I included a link to this post in the WP post and will now resteem it here. I am telling everyone that if I can do it, it is not very difficult. Thank you.

Well the republishing may have worked. The secind one went right through. Then I looked again and had two seperate posts in steemit. May have been a delay with block chain

Well there is no resteem button. I guess it is because it has passed some time limit. That is one issue I wish could be fixed on steemit. The older work kinda just exists in a purgatory somewhere. :) Thank you

Much appreciated. You can still resteem their V1 release announcement :)

Actually, this guide is outdated now. You can install through the WordPress plugin library now, rather than this manual process.

I've thought a bit about how it becomes impossible to resteem stuff. It seems that once a post has paid out, the ability to edit and resteem both disappear. This make some sense, but if there's action happening in the comments, there's still value and future payouts in the post. I guess making new posts with links to the old ones is the best workaround.

How do I get the images to center in the Steemit posts? They are in the right place on WP.

I had the same issue with centering not happening on the Steemit side. Markdown actually supports writing html directly, so this works: <center>Thing you want to center</center>

It's good to know that this didn't get fixed in the new release. I'll report it to the devs.

I tried several wordpress to steemit plugins but non of them work
I used the private posting key
in one case a plugin worked but the post looked like a mess but the next post gave an error. Since then none of the plugins I tried worked and I get no error or what so ever,
In the wordpress settings it says that my username and key are ok

Hey, sorry to hear about the trouble you're having.

I don't have experience with other plugins, but I might be able to help with SteemPress. Are you using the latest version installed from the WordPress plugin directory?

Only one doubt about the plugin. My posts are mirrored on Steemit but the system will not understand that there is plagiarism?
Since the content here will be the same as it is in Wordpress.

Wow, your article really help me a lot, and I've finished install and set up the steempress successfully. Thx a lot:-D

I have been struggling with the process of installation until I found out I only access this through the business plan. this makes me feel blue