What is content curation?
The term “content curation” has often been misused or incorrectly defined. The idea of content curation is to gather content from an outside source and distribute it to your audience after some careful filtering, sorting, and editing.
Rather than creating all your content yourself, sometimes you might want to share some other great content you find on the web. This is what content curation and content hubs are all about.
All you have to do is pull in content from the sources of your choice then manually filter and sort it, making sure you only select the most valuable content for your site. Besides manually filtering through all the content, you must also add value to the content already provided through the use of annotations, helping your user better understand the content in the context that it was published.
Content curation in WordPress can be handled through the use of plugins. Some of these are purposely designed, while others are content aggregators with the added functionality of curation, and others are simply WordPress versions of great curation services already on the web.
Below I’ve compiled a list of some of the best content curation plugins currently available for WordPress. Let’s check them out.
WP RSS Aggregator
WP RSS Aggregator is the most comprehensive and elegant RSS feed solution for WordPress. It’s the original and premier WordPress plugin for importing, merging, and displaying RSS and Atom feeds on your WordPress site.
With WP RSS Aggregator you can display feeds from one or more sites right on your blog or even aggregate feeds from multiple sites. You can add any number of feeds through an administration panel, and the plugin will then pull feed items from these sites, merging them and displaying them in date order.
It’s got a selection of premium plans that add some great functionality too. The most popular one is Pro, which includes the Feed to Post feature, and with it you can import RSS feeds directly into posts or custom post types, populating a site in minutes. Among its many features, by setting the imported feed items to Draft you’ll even be able to edit the post before publishing, ensuring you get the most out of it.
The core WP RSS Aggregator plugin is free and can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository. The premium Pro Plan is then the most comprehensive solution around for content curation with WordPress, adding all the advanced features you may need.
Get WP RSS Aggregator
MyCurator
MyCurator is a content curation software that makes it easy to build quality content for your WordPress site. It works tirelessly in the background to deliver a pipeline of interesting and usable content to you throughout the day.
It also offers some great curation tools for you to use to curate the content. You can use Get It Bookmarklet to curate content as you browse the web, while Notebooks lets you save the best articles and posts you find for use in your original articles or to build complex content curation posts.
Originally a powerful corporate level content curation software, this WordPress plugin uses a cloud process to perform intensive AI processing and article classification. What this does is it allows you to train MyCurator to find only the best, most relevant articles for your site while weeding out any off-topic and spammy content found on the web.
While MyCurator allows you to curate content for a single Topic (equivalent to a WordPress category) for free, you’ll need to use one of their paid plans to access the cloud service.
There are 2 paid monthly plans available as well as a free basic plan.
Curated List Manager
The WordPress Curated List Manager plugin lets users organize links and content around categories and display them as a curated collection.
It is a great tool for producing content marketing and building an engaging WordPress knowledge base. You can try out a free demo here.
Here’s a look at some of its features:
- Multiple lists
- Tags support
- Fast filtering support
- Styling options
- Last update date indicator
- Number of items/links included in list
- Many ordering options
- Two link types: icon or checkbox
- Optional subtitles
- Image support
- Automatic NEW tag
- User personalization
- Bookmarklet
- Category widget and shortcode
- CSV Import and Export
- Order Links in Category
The plugin is priced at $39 for a single-site and $69 for 5 sites, as well as being included in the CM Publishing Tools bundle.
Press Forward
Press Forward is a plugin that provides an integrated editorial workflow for curating content aggregation and curation within your WordPress dashboard.
It’s been designed for bloggers and editorial teams that would like to collect, discuss and share content from a number of sources on the web. It includes a feed reader embedded within the dashboard, a bookmarklet to capture content from the web, tools for collaborative and editorial work, as well as a process for republishing aggregated content.
It’s also got a long list of other features including full text, image, video and post metadata import for each item, nomination of single items for further review prior to publication, batch import of feeds from OPML and more.
Press Forward is a free plugin that can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository.
Conclusion
In conclusion, from all the plugins above you can see how valuable the idea of content curation and building a content hub can be for your WordPress blog or site, whether it’s a dedicated news aggregator or otherwise.
It adds great content to your site without having to compose it all yourself. You can share the awesome content other professionals have compiled on your own site, adding value to your own site without having to do all the work.
All the plugins above do a good job of this, some more detailed than others, and some more functional than others. Our top recommendation remains WP RSS Aggregator.
Have you used any of these or any other curation plugins? Let us know in the comments below.
42 Responses
Hey Mark,
Unless YouBrand/CurationSuite have changed names, their websites are no longer:
youbrandinc.com
curationsuite.com
No post on Twitter since Jun 6, 2019
Does anyone know what happened to them?
Hey Dan, it seems like they closed shop so we’ll need to work on updating this list. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. If you found any alternatives that you think are worth including here, let me know 🙂
CurationSuite/Brandinc just issued another unauthorised transaction – US97 charging me for their Listening Engine! And that’s despite the successful chargeback against them last year. The chargeback last year was clear cut as I had attached to my credit card bank the “hardcopies” (screenshot pdf) with Brandinc replied in Zendesk ticket that they had cancelled the subscription.
Very unprofessional for them to do that. Now, I’ve to get the bank to block/cancel and re-issue me a new card. What a time buster.
The Curation Suite is a great idea but hampered by it’s limitations and since it’s a closed system can’t be extended. I’m currently trying to get it to work on one of my sites and a lot of the functionality seems hit or miss, mostly miss. Their Listening engine brings up a lot of sites but the Curation panel doesn’t load any pages so this part is worthless. I can do a quick edit to get a draft post and I can use a browser to follow the links they find and get those pages to load just fine. Also, the limitation of 25 keywords is by far way too small a number for me to do what I want and even though I can extend that number to 40 by paying extra I feel that even that number is way too low. One other thing. Although they state they have ” On average our release cycle is every 2 weeks.” for Curation Suite their Changelog page shows the last update is “2.9.6 = December 6th, 2017”. Needless to say I’m looking for another solution for site curation.
I’m also using the WP RSS Aggregator and that’s working quite well for me. It’s not the same scope as the Curation Suite but, for what it’s designed to do, it does it quite well.
Curation Suite sucks. It is not user-friendly, their customer support is horrible, and they trap you into a subscription that you cannot get out of. I have two open tickets that are months old. No response. Also, I have requested they cancel my account through email, support ticket, and no one answers.
Hi Debbie, I’m sorry to hear that.
Have you tried out WP RSS Aggregator? If you’d like any more info about it, just let me know or contact us here: https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
We’ll be more than happy to help you find what you need.
Agreed on the dismayed customer support of Curation Suite. Issued a support ticket way ahead of time to cancel the Listening Engine subscription and they acknowledged. But they still proceed with the renewal subsequently … despite I’ve removed my credit card details though. Have to waste time filing a dispute with the bank. Nevertheless, just the Curation Suite plugin itself (not the Listening Engine) is a pretty decent curation plugin though.
Thanks for sharing, William.
What was it that you liked while using the Curation Suite plugin?
Hi Mark,
I’ve got the original Curation Suite plugin some years back and it was a one-time payment. They don’t seem to offer just the plugin alone and is currently on subscription model which include Listening Engine (LE).
Realised I don’t really need LE as the standalone CS plugin include search feature which I can manually select the news/content. I’d prefer manually selection of the news/articles so as to maintain content relevancy and quality. Bottomline, it suits my project (SgMyLIVE.com).
Frankly, I stumbled upon this post because I’m on the lookout if there’s a good curation plugin replacement.
Have you looked into the WP RSS Aggregator plugin?
If you have any questions about your specific use-case for it, I’ll be happy to answer your queries here or you can contact the support team here: https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
Hi Mark,
I’ve marveled at WP News Desk. I love the Baskerville 2 theme. It is simultaneously simple and robust. And the use of RSS Aggregator and Feed To Post is brilliant!
I have a dev building an identical site, albeit in a different industry. My question is: can the RSS family of plugins be configured to pull in content; make it available in an editable post draft; and be kept on the website?
I ask this because on WP News Desk when a grid “card” is clicked, it takes the site user to the original source page of the content, which is off the WP News Desk site.
I’d like to have my site’s Home Page be an Index, of sorts, that provides content choices to the user. And, when they’ve made their content choice, they are taken to the curated post on my site.
Can this be accomplished with the RSS plugins?
Thanks for a great article… and for all you do!
Wayne
Hey Wayne, that’s awesome!
Of course, that is actually the default behaviour of WP RSS Aggregator. WP News Desk behaves the way it does through the filter below:
https://kb.wprssaggregator.com/article/295-f2p-filter-make-post-titles-link-directly-to-the-original-article
By default, the posts will be accessed on your own site. Also, you are free to import and publish automatically, or import as drafts then publish manually after making changes, or even limit the amount of content being imported so the readers can continue reading the full article on the original source. You can do it all.
Yes very useful Mark. Correct me if I am wrong but they seem to fall into 2 broad categories:
1) Seem to focus on Automatic Website Pages that pull in feeds and displays them.
2) The others seem to focus on creating a blog post and pulling in citations.
Admittedly both may overlap somewhere, but I am looking for Type 2.
I am self funding so reluctant to pay for anything until I know it works for me.
Hey Trevor
The first category is a very common use-case. Many also import outside content to be displayed alongside their own – this ensures the site also has its own original content.
Not sure i understood the second category – how would that work?
Hi, this is a great list. Thank you! I work with several clients who use WP and they all want to gather stories… I’m looking for a way that people from all over can share a story about their connection to our nonprofits. They may have stories from the US, south america, Africa, etc. I want them to be able to post their story, then I can tag them with a “type” and then use them for my future marketing efforts by pulling them up by type. Can you help me? Sort of a newbie to WP.
Hey Katherine, we may find a way to use WP RSS Aggregator for this if you have many sources. You’ll be able to filter the posts imported based on a keyword, which is up to you.
Feel free to contact us on support at wprssaggregator.com to discuss some more details.
Great list, thanks for sharing. I hadn’t heard of PressForward yet and it’s exactly what I was looking for.
You saved my life! literally! (well not THAT literally)
I ran into a plugin that was called kurator a while back and then it was discontinued. Then asked my design staff to look for something similar and said there wasn’t anything on the market regarding plugins.
That was a couple of months ago.
Yours was the first result and Wow, a lot of Very good quality recommendations! Our site now is running three and we can’t live without them.
Thanks!
That’s great to hear! Which ones are you running?
Great post Mark, some new tools there I didn’t know about, thanks for sharing!
We recently added a direct WordPress integration at , so you can easily create curated web roundups and resource hubs to embed on your WordPress site. Would be amazing if you could add us to the list?
Thanks for sharing! I’ve always been a little hesitant to lean into this type of activity on my own site, but this really outlines and explains things well. appreciate the share and glad it came up in my search!
have a great week and keep sharing!
Gary
Hi Gary, glad to hear that!
May I ask which option you opted for?
I have been using Press Forward on one of my sites and find that it is a brilliant tool, free to download and has fantastic features. It is easy to use and straight forward to implement and I cannot recommend it more highly to anyone looking to implement curated content on their blog.
Take a look @
Where I am putting Press Forward through it’s paces.
This link does not seem to work, it took me to
Hi Folks – What’s the best free plugin to gather content to manually curate it?
Hey Daniel, have you chosen one yet?
You should opt for WP RSS Aggregator like we did on WP News Desk ourselves:
– completely works with WP RSS Aggregator.
I used curation suite and then they billed me, turned it off, and would not return my calls or emails. I charged the entire suite back with Paypal because of non-use for an entire month. Not more than a week after the money is back in my account Amy Noteworthy, who apparently works there is looking to get revenge and leaves a one star review on my business facebook page! I’d stay as far away from Curation Suite by You Brand Inc. as you can get or suffer their wrath!
Tracy,
First up, I do apologize for any frustration this has caused you.
But a little balance here.
We have responded to each one of your emails, support requests and phone calls.
The bottom line was your subscription payment in August 2015 was skipped and never came thru. Our Listening Engine requires a subscription so it was de-activated. If your subscription has lapsed your told that when you access your Listening Engine via an error message.
When your payment eventually came through in September we did turn it back on. But by that time you filed a dispute with paypal which we requested you remove. You did not.
We shared this with you not only in our support responses but in the dispute responses with paypal.
I’m not aware of Amy reviewing your company as you note above, I’ll talk to her and see if she did. I can tell you she didn’t do it on our behalf or at our instruction.
Hi Mark, I didn’t see “Scoop.It” on your list…. have you heard of it?
Also, I am just starting out and need a hungry (yet talented) SEO for my foundational stuff on the launch of my website– oh–and to teach me how to use one of these Content Curators….
Probably somebody on the front end of their biz as I don’t make the “big bucks” yet…
any recommendations?
Thanks! Mel
Hi Mark, thanks for this article. Have you tried Curationsoft or ScoopIt since writing this? Mel Vicitus, are you happy with your SEO? If you’re still looking/looking to upgrade, I have just the person for you if you want to get in touch.
I installed the Storify plugin and then all admin pages went blank. Since it hasn’t been updated for 9 months I think it’s safe to say that plugin doesn’t support newer versions of WP.
Thanks for letting us know Andy, we’ll have to keep an eye out on that one.
Mark,
Thanks for mentioning Curation Suite. One addition I wanted to share is we have a content discovery addon called the Listening Engine. Most people think of it as a mix between feedly and buzzsumo, as it gives you a very feed like view and you can sort content on various social data. This addon helps you find prime content to curate and it works right within your WordPress dashboard just like Curation Suite. The Listening Engine addon also opens up a few other curation features.
I’ll also add to the SEO question.
We teach and follow what Google/Matt Cutts and others have said on this subject. Good curation will enhance and not hurt your SEO of your site. The key is to do what Charles mentioned above. Always curate from high quality sources, add your own thoughts and commentary, and focus on adding value. Generally you don’t want to cite more than a 6-8 sentences and you want your commentary to be 200-300+ words. What I just described there would be what we call a single source curation. Your citing a single source and your wrapping the cited content with your own thoughts or commentary.
Thank you for the clarification and I believe I understand. I’d really like to split my blog with curated content on the right and my own blog entries on the left or main body. On days when I don’t have a full, original blog entry, I’d like to quick comment on someone else’s article and provide it to my readers.
Is this something Curation Suite is designed for?
That’s completely doable but this is more a function of how you categorize your WordPress site than how Curation Suite treats your content. This is something we see quite a few people do, that is separate their curated content from unique content.
What you would want to do is either setup your categories or use tags to split out specific content. Then in your right hand side you would only show content from certain categories or certain tags. For some sites using a tag works better for others using categories.
As far as how Curation Suite integrates. The content it curates is all what we call raw content. Meaning we ensure we don’t do any shortcut tricks or put any footprint with your content. This is important because that means you can change themes, use other plugins that need to see the content and it works just like your own content you create.
Not to confuse the issue but our Listening Engine addon adds a few more curation features that make this a little bit easier as well.
Bottom line what you want to do is possible with not just our plugin but much of these on this list. Although some treat content differently.
Scott, thanks for the info. I went thru the Curation Suite site and it looks really powerful. I think I have more questions than I had before, but when it comes time to revisit this I know where to start!
You’re welcome Scott, and thanks for letting us know about the Listening Engine add-on, sounds interesting.
Also, thanks for your input on how content curation affects SEO and how we should treat curated content on our own site.
Please ignore the previous comment which was the victim of word jumble
Curated content is not just content that is cut and paste from another website. It is content that is acknowledged as being derived from a named source which has been expanded upon or annotated to add value to your readers. For example I might find a post on cyrated content on WP Mayor and reference the article on my blog with additional comments about how this practice really can add SEO points to your page by giving real life examples
That’s right Charles, thanks for the clarification. Naming the source is always important in these cases, after all it’s only fair to credit the person who put the time and effort into an article.
Any SEO experts out there –
Does curation come with an SEO penalty? How is that avoided by these plugins?
“By manually selecting the most closely related posts you’ll be doing a lot of good to your site’s SEO.” Is that really the case?
Nice collection! I’ve tried out a couple of plugins listed here, and am currently running my 3 blogs on ExpressCurate plugin. I found its features really useful, especially the optimization options.
Thanks Amy!