Rochelle's Overall Rating
The Caffeinated Content plugin is a WordPress blog plugin that allows users to pull content into their blogs based on whatever keywords users choose to use. I have been using this plugin for quite a few months and I am LOVING it! This Caffeinated Content review is all positive, as this plugin is one of the most useful WordPress plugins I use.
Let me say upfront that you can do everything this plugin does on your own. You can go to Yahoo Answers, YouTube, or article directories to get content related to your blog. Where this plugin won me over was by how much time it saves me doing those things, and, it keeps track of what has been added to your site.
It can be very easy to use this plugin incorrectly. To get the most value from the content you add, you will need to rewrite it. Otherwise, you risk having duplicate content on your site, which will devalue your site in the eyes of search engines. But if you take the few minutes needed to rewrite the content, you will be able to add more information relating to your site’s niche than you thought was available. It is truly a powerful plugin!
Caffeinated Content Features
After you activate the Caffeinated Content plugin, you will have the ability to add content to your blog from Yahoo Answers, YouTube, and article directories. If there are comments on an imported item, such as questions from Yahoo Answers, you can even have those comments added to your own blog as comments on the post you create.
Additionally, each post you create with Caffienated Content includes a thumbnail image relating to the post. This is wonderful if you like having images on your blogs, as I do. Of course, if you don’t want or like the image, you can easily delete it.
Everything you import with this plugin can be edited or customized. If you want to automatically post each item, you can do that. If you want to save the items as drafts for future editing, you can do that. There is even more you can do, as this is just a sampling of the flexibility of this plugin.
Caffeinated Content keeps track of what it imports from each site it uses. This is one of the best features of this tool. This means you won’t use duplicate information. If you do what this plugin does on your own, then it will be very easy to duplicate your efforts. If you choose to keep track of what you’ve researched then you will need to create a fairly complicated method of tracking. With this plugin, you don’t need to do anything. It tracks things for you with no effort on your part!
Be aware that Yahoo Answers requires sites that use their content to show the wording ”Powered by Yahoo! Answers” somewhere on the sites. The plugin does not do this for you, so you will need to add it somewhere. The footer is probably the best place to do this.
Pros and Cons of Caffeinated Content
Pros of Caffeinated Content
- Highly customizable
- Tons of fresh content can be added to your blog
- Images are included with each created post
- Imported content is tracked to prevent duplicate posts
Cons of Caffeinated Content
- Duplicate content is a concern if you don’t edit each post
- The wording ”Powered by Yahoo! Answers” is not automatically added to blogs
About the Developers
The developers of this plugin are dedicated to helping blog owners easily add new content to their sites.
Cost and Licensing of Caffeinated Content
- One Time Cost: $77
- Develop as MANY Websites as you like with a single license!
- Free Lifetime Upgrades at no additional Cost!
Mark - Script Critics on Tue, 17th Feb 2009 9:28 pm
Rochelle – Great review! I have to say that I have used Caffeinated Content since I first found it last year! I have never found an easier way to find articles and ideas for content onsite.
Pulling in just a few topical articles on a new or established site can immediately inspire many posts!!
Jim on Fri, 20th Feb 2009 2:39 pm
This one’s a real gem!!!
The best way to get a bunch of content to your site next to paying somebody to write it.
The only problem I found was with the search. If your topic is highly specialized you may have to delete a lot of stuff you don’t want because you can’t use quotes to search for exact keyword phrases.
Jeremy on Thu, 5th Mar 2009 3:12 pm
bought this a few weeks ago and have been very impressed by it.
Sayeed on Thu, 30th Apr 2009 6:16 pm
Do you have an example of where you use it in a high traffic blog or site?
Mark on Fri, 1st May 2009 7:18 am
@ Sayeed –
Personally, I have not used it to populate entire websites. I have however used it as a tool to pull in hundreds of topic related blog posts, then used those posts as a basis to build all the content on the site over a few months time.
1 – Pull in your topical posts, leaving them all as drafts.
2 – Once a week, pick 5 of those drafts to revise and post to the site.
Most, if not all, affiliate blog owners run into a writers block, no knowing what to blog about on the site, especially if they arent knowledgable or have much interest in the site content. Caf Content provides the topics… you just reword parts of the post to make them unique.
M
Anna on Sun, 31st May 2009 8:53 am
I’m trying to decide whether to buy Caffeinated Content or WP Answers. Have you used WP Answers and do you have an opinion?
Also, I really like the function of pulling in a thumbnail image with the Caffeinated Content, but am concerned that there may be copyright problems? Where do the images come from?
Thanks for your advice.
Rochelle on Sun, 31st May 2009 9:20 am
Anna,
Sorry, I am not familiar with WP Answers, so I can’t give you any feedback on that.
Good question on the image source. Although I am not positive, I believe the images come from sources such as Wikipedia, which does allow free use of those images.
Just to be sure, though, I sent an email to the support desk for CC. I’ll post their answer when I get it.
Rochelle
Anna on Sun, 31st May 2009 9:29 am
Rochelle
Thanks so much for taking the trouble to follow up on the images question. I shall be interested to hear what they say.
I’ve now read several reviews of both products and think that I shall be buying Caffeinated Content because it obtains content from various sources whereas WP Answers only draws from Yahoo Answers. I shall wait to see what response you get from CC.
I’ve bookmarked this page to ensure that I buy through your link.
Rochelle on Sun, 31st May 2009 9:35 am
Anna,
I don’t use the article aspect of CC, but I LOVE how easy it is to find relevant YouTube videos. And using the Yahoo Answers aspect of CC makes it really easy to create posts based on what people are already wanting to know about any given topic.
Rochelle
Andrea on Fri, 5th Jun 2009 11:45 am
Caffeinated Content does not work for everyone. I have requested support from CC/Kanseio for over a week and there is NO reply. I get server errors, sometimes I get content for a common keyword, and sometimes not.
Jason replied once to an easy questions but when it comes to the tough stuff – I get NOTHING.
No email reply, no tech support, insufficient documentation, and no refund.
I would love to have this working but it’s not.
Mark on Fri, 5th Jun 2009 12:20 pm
@ Andrea –
I have had great support from the Kanseo developer myself, on more than one occasion!
If you want to try and shoot me an email offline, I may be able to help you out with it.
Mark -at- thenichestorebuilder.com
Thanks for the feedback on this!
Mark
Marcus on Mon, 8th Jun 2009 9:52 pm
Andrea,
I agree with you. CC/Kanseio support is horrendous. The product itself is sub par, there are plenty of other better options out there.
If CC/Kanseio had some type of support it might fall in the decent category, but I have read a lot of reviews about this product where the major complaint was the product was sold and like you said
“No email reply, no tech support, insufficient documentation, and no refund.”
I would personally save your $77 and buy one of the many other products out there, some are even free. The concept is good, but the delivery is quite bad. All your basically buying is an expensive tool to plagiarize with no support and little documentation.
Rochelle on Tue, 16th Jun 2009 12:04 pm
Marcus,
I am beginning to agree about the poor technical support. I have not had a response to my email sent some time ago.
However, I disagree about this being “an expensive tool to plagiarize.” CC does have the potential to be abused, but if used properly it is an excellent method for gathering ideas for writing your own content.
Rochelle
Mohamad on Fri, 28th Aug 2009 5:47 pm
Thanks for the review. Although I appreciate this software I think it would take me longer to rewrite an article than writing an original one and particularly if I don’t have research the topic. But like Mark mentioned, it is a good idea for providing ideas for future posts. I would like to buy it but not sure. Thanks
Carolyn on Tue, 29th Dec 2009 11:31 pm
I use this plug in. Also a victim of the non-responsive tech support – so I’m wondering if anyone knows how to take control of the default links that link back to Kanseio.com – they keep talking about some template – but I don’t know where to find it – if it can be edited in the wordpress admin area or if this is something to download via ftp, make change and then upload again.
Anyone have the same issue? any resolutions?
Mark on Wed, 30th Dec 2009 8:19 am
@ Carolyn -
If you open the main CC folder, you will see a subfolder named “templates”, which contains text files of the templates.
I always use the plain.txt file for posts.
The default plain.p.txt looks like:
[who] asked:
[video]
[post]
[link]
[who] shows the persons name
[video] shows a video
[post] shows the content of the post
[link] shows a link back to cc.
My own file looks like:
[post]
Hope that helps,
Mark
Rochelle on Wed, 30th Dec 2009 8:26 am
Carolyn,
Mark beat me to the answer. Thanks, Mark!
To add to what Mark said, I actually edited the plain.c.txt file so it shows just:
[answer]
And my plain.p.txt looks like:
[video][post]
So, you can play around with the information that came with these two files until you are satsisfied with the results they provide.
Rochelle
Rochelle on Tue, 9th Feb 2010 1:58 pm
This message is to all who have had crappy support, or no support at all, with Caffeinated Content. I just got an email from the author of this plugin stating that he had outsourced about 95% of the workings for his plugin, including tech support. He said all went well initially, but it slowly fell apart. He didn’t realize how bad it was until recently, but by now, it was too late to fix the problem. He is currently working on fixing all that needs to be fixed, including tech support.
So, if you have had a bad experience, you might want to allow him a bit of time, then try again. He sounded sincere in his email, so I am inclined to believe what he said. Otherwise, what was the point in his admitting any of this?
Rochelle
Joseph on Fri, 19th Feb 2010 11:41 am
Hi, I’ve been using the Caffeinated Content plugin now for a few years and would highly recommend it to anyone who is seriously considering running multiple Wordpress blogs. This is one of the nicest plugins I have in my toolbox.
Thanks
Joseph
Gary on Fri, 26th Feb 2010 9:28 pm
I cannot get CaffeinatedContent to display the articles it fetches. It does everything it is supposed to do except actually display the new content. I get no response from support. So far, the script is useless.
Mark on Fri, 26th Feb 2010 9:36 pm
Gary –
Did you check to make sure you set a “template” on the setup screen, AND to make sure the template file itself is in the caffinatedcontent/templates/ folder?
Mark