I created an automation that allows you to effortlessly create WordPress posts directly from a Google Sheet. This beginner-friendly guide will walk you through the entire process, from setup to execution, ensuring you can adapt and expand it as needed.
Beginner WordPress Automation Overview
This automation simplifies the process of creating WordPress posts directly from a Google Sheet. It’s beginner-friendly, allowing anyone to get started quickly. Once this basic setup is in place, you can modify it to suit your specific needs.
The automation revolves around three key components: Google Sheets for input, Claude for content generation, and WordPress for publishing. Each component plays a vital role in ensuring a smooth workflow.
With this setup, you can generate articles efficiently. You simply enter a topic and its status in Google Sheets. The automation takes care of generating the content and publishing it to your WordPress site.
Key Components of the Automation
- Google Sheets: This acts as your content management system where you input the topics and track their status.
- Claude: A language model that generates the article content based on the topics you provide.
- WordPress: Your platform for publishing the generated articles.
Google Sheets Setup for Blog Posts
Setting up Google Sheets is straightforward. Start by creating a new spreadsheet. In this sheet, you’ll want to have specific columns for your topics, their statuses, and the links to the published posts.
Each row will represent a different article you want to generate. The columns should include:
- Topic: The subject of your article.
- Status: This can be set to options like “Ready for Article Generation” or “Article Generated.”
- WordPress Link: This will be filled in once the article is published.
For the status column, you can use data validation to create a dropdown menu. This helps keep track of where each article is in the process. Color-coding these statuses can also enhance visibility.
Connecting Google Sheets & Generating Content with Claude
After your Google Sheet is ready, the next step involves connecting it to Claude. This requires setting up a connection through Make.com. Start by adding a connection and selecting Google Sheets as your data source.
Once connected, you can specify which spreadsheet and sheet to use. From there, you’ll configure the automation to look for rows marked as “Ready for Article Generation.” This is crucial for ensuring that your automation only processes relevant entries.
Then, you’ll introduce a Claude module. Here, you’ll create a prompt that instructs Claude to generate an article based on the topic provided. It’s important to format the response in HTML, as this will allow for seamless integration with WordPress.
Set the content type to text and include instructions for Claude to start with a paragraph tag. This ensures that the generated content is ready for publication without additional formatting.
Creating WordPress Posts Automatically
Once Claude generates the article, the next step is to publish it on WordPress. For this, you need to add a WordPress module in your automation. Make.com provides an intuitive interface for creating posts.
First, select the connection to your WordPress site. Then, map the title of the post to the topic from your Google Sheet and the content to the response generated by Claude. It’s essential to ensure that the HTML response from Claude is correctly formatted for WordPress.
After setting up the post details, you can choose to save the post as a draft or publish it directly. If you prefer to publish immediately, adjust the settings accordingly.
Finally, update the status in Google Sheets to reflect that the article has been generated. This keeps your spreadsheet organized and allows you to track the progress of each post easily.
Updating Google Sheets with WordPress Link
Once your article is generated and published on WordPress, the next step is to update your Google Sheet with the link to the published post. This helps keep everything organized and allows you to easily access your articles later.
To do this, you will need to add a module in your automation that retrieves the post ID from WordPress. Once you have the post ID, you can get the corresponding link and update your Google Sheet.
Start by adding a WordPress module that retrieves the post. You’ll pass in the post ID you got from the previous step. This retrieves the source URL for the newly created article.
After that, add a Google Sheets module. Here, you will select the row in your sheet that corresponds to the article you just created. Update the WordPress link column with the URL retrieved from WordPress. This step ensures that your Google Sheets reflects the current status of your articles.
Adding AI-Generated Featured Images to WordPress
Enhancing your articles with images can make them more engaging. To automate the addition of featured images, I created a process using an AI service called Flux One Point One Ultra. This service generates images based on the article’s topic, making it easy to add relevant visuals to your posts.
First, you need to set up an account with Flux and obtain an API key. This key will allow you to access their image generation service. Once you have the key, add a module in your automation to make a request to Flux’s API.
In this request, you’ll specify the prompt for image generation based on the article’s topic. The response will include the image URL, which you’ll need to store for later use.
Next, you’ll want to download the generated image. Use an HTTP GET request to grab the image file from the URL provided in the previous step. After that, you’ll add a WordPress module to create a media item. Here, map the downloaded file to the media item in WordPress.
Running the Complete Automation
With all the components in place, it’s time to run the entire automation. This will create a seamless workflow from generating articles to publishing them on WordPress, complete with links and images.
To do this, make sure your Google Sheet has the status set to “Ready for Article Generation.” Trigger the automation, and watch as it processes each entry. It will generate the article, publish it to WordPress, and update the Google Sheet with the post link.
After running the automation, verify that everything works as expected. Check your Google Sheet to see if the WordPress link is updated correctly. Then, visit your WordPress site to ensure the article has been published with the featured image.
More Advanced Blogging Automation Options
Once you’re comfortable with the basic automation, there are several advanced options to explore. For instance, you could introduce custom fields in WordPress to manage additional metadata for your articles.
Another idea is to break the outline and article generation processes into separate steps. You can store outlines in an Airtable base, allowing for more structured content creation. This way, you can generate facts and figures using tools like Perplexity Researcher, enhancing the depth of your articles.
Additionally, you could incorporate YouTube video embeds by using an API to fetch relevant videos based on your article topic. This can enrich your content and provide more value to your readers.
For real-time interaction, consider setting up a workflow that allows you to trigger article generation via messaging platforms like Telegram, Slack, or WhatsApp. This adds a layer of convenience, allowing you to create content on the go.
