WordPress Watch Posts module can't find published articles

Hi there,

I think, this is the easiest piece of workflow I’ve ever done in Make (I’ve made a few), but somehow it does not work.

It should check every 30 minutes if a new article is published or shceduled on a website, then pass the data to a GSheet. When I test it in edit (“run once”), it usually find both published and shceduled articles. But when running in the background, it only finds shceduled articles and misses the published ones.

I’ve reached out to the admin of the webpage, there is no sign of error or limitation on their side. From my side, everything seems ok, the scneario runs, there is no authentication or data retrieval warning, still: I can’t access the published news.

Am I missing something or is it just bad integration/WP plugin problem? Any advice is welcomed!


(the automation only found one scheduled article at 9:27:09, although there were many published)

@samliew can you please help me to figure out what’s going on here? I tested in 100 times, every single time it finds the published articles when I’m editing the scenario but fails every time to find them when running in the background. I’m completely lost here :confused:

Sorry, I’m on holidays these few weeks, and can’t look into it at the moment.

Did you know, this forum has a Hire a Pro category, where you can post your request for off-site specialised help on other platforms (video call/screenshare/private messaging/etc.)? This may help you get your issue resolved faster especially if it is urgent. It is important to post your request in the Hire a Pro category, as forum members are not allowed to advertise their services (even offer FREE assistance to help) in other categories like here. Once you have posted in the Hire a Pro category, that will allow other members like me to provide booking links to our calendars for a free consultation and video assistance (including screenshare).

Hope this helps! Drop me a message if I forget to return to this topic in a month’s time.

@samliew

Sure, enjoy your holiday! :slight_smile:

Hello @Janos,

Just a dummy question first: After you have tested, are you ok with the fact Watch new Posts will only retrieve the new articles? Or have you also played with “Choose where to start” before you activate your scenario?

And, now your scenario is ON, if you add a “Future” article, does it appear in the next scenario execution? I think you said it does, right?

And are you saying that when the status of the article is “Publish”, it won’t appear in the next scenario execution? I think you said it doesn’t => Just making sure I got it.

If you see articles in the scenario executions only when they are in “future” status, could it be because the Watch New Posts is only checking the creation date, and, since it already found it, when the same article is in “publish” state, it’s not retrieved again? Can you test the following:

  • Wait the next scenario execution
  • Then, before 5 minutes, create a new post and publish it
  • When the new scenario execution happened, can you check if the Post was found?

If if was found, can you do the following:

  • Wait the next scenario execution
  • Then, before 5 minutes, create a new post But do not publish it
  • When the new scenario execution happened, you should find it
  • Then publish the post (before the next scenario execution)
  • wait for the next execution and check if you see it.

If you don’t see it in the published status, but you saw the other published article in the previous step, it might mean that only the Creation Date is used by Watch New Posts to find articles. There should be a workaround using Search Posts instead of Watch Posts.

But let’s first investigate.

Cheers,

Benjamin

2 Likes

Hello Benjamin,

Thank you for taking the time to deal with this. Just to clarify:

  • Yes, I’ve tested where to start, and it successfully found all the published and scheduled (future) articles.
  • Yes, when it’s active, it only retrieves scheduled (future) articles.
  • I already tried what you suggested: I created a new published post with dummy data 5 minutes before the run, then checked if Make found it after the run or not. It did not find. :frowning:

I did the same with another WP website just to make sure that this is not a plugin issue. The #2 website has different plugins but the problem is the same: only scheduled articles are retrieved.

I also switched the 30-minute scheduling to on-demand just to see if that’s causing the problem (instant trigger + scheduling), but that did not work out either.

Right now I use a different approach: fetch articles by title name using the Search Posts. Although this is not what I wanted in first place, it seems to be working so far. Nonetheless, I’d be happier with Watch post module working.

@Janos yes it’s weird that it works properly during your tests, since it’s exactly the same as running the scenario scheduled.

I would suggest you open a ticket to help center so that they can have a look.

Happy you found a temporary workaround

Benjamin

Thank you Benjamin, I did that 2 days ago, we are in contact, but it seems this error is baffling for them too.

ps: I don’t want to open a new ticket for this, but if you Benjamin or anyone has a suggestion on how to perform a search only in the_title_ of a WP post, I’ appreciate it. It seems to me that Search post module in Make can only search in the whole body of the text (“read also” posts included which messes things up!) and I can’t limit it to only search in post title :frowning:

@Janos if you already opened a ticket, of course, do not make a new one.

Is there any way you give me an access to a sandbox env so that I can play with it? Or, is it simple to create a new Wordpress account and test it? I never used Wordpress so far.
I would love to test on my side to see how we could overcome this issue.

Benjamin

@Janos never mind, I found an account I could use. I will test later today/tmr and keep you updated

Hi dear @Janos,

I did a few tests, and I didn’t manage to reproduce your issue. BUT, I had a few issues when I had just started testing it; at the beginning, I thought I had the same problem as you, and then it behaved as if it had “stabilized”, picking any new Published or Future posts I create between 2 scenario executions.

I noticed that, as I expected, if the scenario finds a Post with status “Future”, and then, the post is published, Make won’t retrieve it; which makes sense because the creation date is already “picked” by the polling trigger.

If you want, I can record a short video that shows all the steps I went through, so that you can see if I’m doing it the same way as you, and to compare our configuration. Just let me know

Kind regards

Benjamin

Thank you Benjamin for taking the time to deal with this. I completely redesigned my scenario so I don’t need to use Watch post anymore. I am almost completely done with the new scenario, my only issue is uploading media items (photos) in an interation into the end page’s media library.

You see, I can’t find a way to change the file name after using an HTTP Get a FIle module and before using Create a media item. The problem is that every downloaded Photo from the internet will be “file.jpg”, and that is a problem when referring to images in the newly created posts. Do you have a idea how can I change the file name in the process? The WP module only let’s you change image title, caption, description but not file name.

Changing the file name in HTTP- Get a file module did not help either:

I’ve found this similar use case in Community forum, but that way it was solved is not clear for me:

Thank you for your help!

@Janos great to see you managed to handle posts! Well done!

For the file, do you mean that even if you change the file name in the Filename field, it won’t change?

I’d see you map 41.Filename, but you could definitely make something dynamic, using functions and timestamp variable. But maybe you did already and it didn’t work properly?

Cheers

Benjamin

I’ve tried it many different ways until I’ve found the solution. It looks like this is working but I need further testing to tell it for sure. (unique identifier variable generates a long string during each iteration.)

1 Like

Yes perfect! you could also combine the title with a timestamp, etc, etc

Benjamin