Member Avatar for hindu times

Hi there,

I am building a Wordpress site, but I'm struggling to find a good plugin to achieve a few things...

Basically I want to make the website a central hub of a lot of my social networks, without me having to continaully update things in several places. So I'm wanting to do the following:

  • Every time I post a new Tweet, I want it to create a new Blog post on my website in the Tweet category. The post should have a default featured image and a I should also be able to set where the Tweet is displayed (i.e. in the title and post content) and if anything else is displayed after the tweet (like a follow button) for example.

  • Every time I upload a new video to YouTube, I want it to create a new blog post on my site in the Video category (and preferably in the Video Post Type) automatically. Again, I should have control over what is pulled into the post other than the video... for example description, tags etc. I would also like it to set the Featured Image of the post to one of the three still images that YouTube creates for a video.

Is the above achievable, and how would I go about figuring it out?

Many thanks in advance,

HT

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Dani AI

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Short answer: yes — it’s doable three practical ways (pick by how much control you need):

  • Quick/low‑code: import feeds (RSS) into WordPress and let a feed‑to‑post plugin create posts.
  • No‑code: use an automation platform (Zapier/Make/Pabbly) to map “new video / new tweet” into a WP post.
  • Full control: a small custom plugin that receives webhooks or polls the APIs, creates posts with wp_insert_post, sideloads thumbnails and stores the external ID to avoid duplicates.

The RSS route is simplest for YouTube because every channel exposes a stable RSS endpoint (e.g. feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=...), and plugins like WP RSS Aggregator (Feed‑to‑Post) can import description, media thumbnails and create posts in a given category. YouTube also supports PubSubHubbub (push notifications) so you can avoid tight polling. For Twitter/X: the platform’s API and access terms changed (free access was largely removed), so depending on your needs you’ll likely need a paid API or a third‑party RSS wrapper — and be careful about the platform Terms of Service before scraping. (wordpress.org)

If you want no‑code reliability, Zapier/Make/Pabbly will trigger on “new video in channel” and create WordPress posts, and they can upload the video thumbnail as featured media. For a plugin/importer, use wp_insert_post() to create the post, then media_sideload_image() / media_handle_sideload() + set_post_thumbnail() to attach the thumbnail. Store the remote video/tweet ID in post meta (e.g. _external_id) and check it before inserting to prevent duplicates; run updates via a system cron or by handling YouTube push notifications for near real‑time behavior. (zapier.com)

Minimal implementation sketch (PHP):

$post_id = wp_insert_post([...]);                  // title, content, status, categories
$att_id  = media_sideload_image($thumb_url,$post_id,null,'id');
if (!is_wp_error($att_id)) set_post_thumbnail($post_id,$att_id);
update_post_meta($post_id,'_external_id',$external_id);

Troubleshooting notes: use system cron (not just WP‑Cron) for reliable polling; watch API rate limits and auth keys; prefer YouTube feed or PubSub (push) over scraping; and start with RSS or Zapier to validate the workflow before building a custom plugin.

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Member Avatar for EvolutionFallen

Without researching into if YT & TW even support this, here are some things you'd need to accomplish this in theory:

  • YouTube API
  • Twitter API
  • Cron jobs

Basically, you'll be pulling information from YouTube and Twitter, which means you'd probably need to access their API. Now assuming that their APIs support pulling information for a particular user (Twitter does, not sure about YT), how does your site know you've posted anything new? Well, you'll need to run cron jobs periodically that check YT and TW for any updates to your user account, then create a new post based on any new information found.

Member Avatar for hindu times

Sounds incredibly complicated?

Is there a legitimate way to do this with my Twitter and YouTubes RSS feeds, and pull them in with some sort of autoblogging plugin?

Member Avatar for EvolutionFallen

That's possible. Again though, because WordPress would need to periodically check for these on its own, you'd probably need cron jobs. There might be some plugins out there that do this, worth looking into.

Doing things the other way around would be easier to accomplish, I think. If there's a WordPress plugin that lets you make posts submit their content to YouTube and/or Twitter, that would save the need of a cron job.

Member Avatar for hindu times

I don't suppose anyone one here would be interested in helping me make a plugin to do what the original post says? I have a (small) budget available.

If anyone is, please send me a Private Message.

Thanks.

Member Avatar for mpranjali
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