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Why does Auto Blog keep posting articles multiple times?

I have Auto Blog set up to import from a few sources, and have had no issues with it for a couple of years. Not too long ago it suddenly started posting multiples of the inbound articles. I’m trying to change settings, but can’t seem to figure it out.

See here on the left column the same article repeated. When I check in the WP admin I noticed that it is categorized correctly in only one, but the rest are uncategorized. http://allaboutchile.com/

I’ve enabled support, if you want to poke around.

Thanks,

Joe

Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:26:20
  • Tyler Postle
    • Recruit

    Hey Joe,

    Hope you’re doing well so far!

    Can you try adding this to your wp-config.php

    define( 'AUTOBLOG_POST_DUPLICATE_CHECK', 'both' );

    That should drastically reduce or get rid of the duplicates. If it doesn’t just let us know and we’ll have another look asap.

    Look forward to hearing back!

    Cheers,

    Tyler

  • Tyler Postle
    • Recruit

    Hey Nitrous,

    Thanks for your reply and leaving the duplicates there. I noticed you have the “override duplicates” option set to “Yes” that means that it will bring in the duplicates and overwrite the previous content. It looks like it might be just bringing it in as new content, can you try turning that option off and seeing if it still brings in duplicates? It should be skipping duplicates when that option is set to “No”.

    Look forward to hearing back!

    Cheers,

    Tyler

  • Nitrous Cloud
    • The Crimson Coder

    Hi Tyler,

    Thanks. That might explain PanAm Post, since it was set to “Yes”, but for EAN (John Cobin) it was already set to “No”, but was duplicating anyway. Can you check and see if you can find anything before I remove the duplicates please?

  • Tyler Postle
    • Recruit

    Hey Nitrous,

    Sorry for my delay! Can you re-grant access so I can check out EAN feed? Then I can test with that one. It’s okay if you have already deleted the duplicates – hopefully I’ll be able to replicate it and if not I’ll see what the developer thinks too :slight_smile: appreciate all your patience on this.

    Talk to you soon!

    Cheers,

    Tyler

  • Tyler Postle
    • Recruit

    Ah, apologies again Nitrous – we’ve lost couple staff recently so been trying to cover other hours. Is it too much to ask to re-grant access one last time? :slight_smile: I’ve already set a reminder for myself to check back on this thread later today.

    Look forward to hearing back! Cheers

  • Tyler Postle
    • Recruit

    Hey Nitrous, just had another thought actually, this could be due to you having it network activated. Not sure if it’s a possibility for you, but in the meantime if you could try it activated site by site instead it would be interesting to see if you still get the duplicates. Cheers :slight_smile: talk to you soon.

  • DTuloJr
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Are the duplicate post original GUID’s and Link’s *identical*? I’ve noticed some providers in the past were updating them (capitalization/punctuation changes) and this caused issues. There’s also an exceedingly rare and more complex issue I’ve identified that involves load balanced web servers and memory caching… but rule out the former scenario, first. It took months to prove the latter, with the help of detailed analysis of the raw SQL table of Autoblog logs. See this thread for details on the latter…

  • Tyler Postle
    • Recruit

    Hey Nitrous,

    Sorry for the delay here. I spoke to the developer about this and they actually suggested the same as @DTuloJr above(thanks for chiming in) – are the duplicate post original GUID’s identical?

    I can check this for you if you like, but will need db access, would you be able to send in your cPanel? Or if you grant support access again then I could install a plugin such as Adminer: https://wordpress.org/plugins/adminer/ to access the db.

    That should work as well and would be less invasive. Just let me know which way works best for you :slight_smile:

    If you go cPanel route then you can send that privately through our contact form: https://wpmudev.com/contact/

    Select “I have a different question” for your topic – this and the subject line ensure that it gets assigned to me :slight_smile:

    Send in:

    Subject: “Attn: Tyler Postle“

    -WordPress admin username

    -WordPress admin password

    -login url

    -cPanel credentials (login url/username/password)

    -link back to this thread for reference

    -any other relevant urls

    **If you keep support access active then no need to send in wp-admin

    Look forward to hearing back!

    Cheers,

    Tyler

  • DTuloJr
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Nitrous,

    The checks that Tyler will perform on duplicate posts by looking at GUIDs and the Autoblog “diagnostic” log entries in the database should go a long way towards identifying the root issue. In order to catch the duplicates as they occur, you may need to extend the amount of log entries that Autoblog will store, from its default of 2 days, to something more like 7. If Tyler needs you to, you can do this by adding the following Autoblog default configuration override to your wp-config.php file:

    define('AUTOBLOG_DASHBOARD_LOG_TTL', '7');

    In the meantime, do you know if your hosting provider is running “load balanced”, “clustered”, or “cloud” servers, possibly using memory caching? Have you made any modifications to your wp-config.php to change Autoblog cron job handling (such as ‘cron’ to ‘pageload’:wink:?

    David

  • Nitrous Cloud
    • The Crimson Coder

    Lots of info. Thanks everyone.

    No, the site really doesn’t get much attention. It sits and get s a lead here and there. So I didn’t change anything other than going in and doing updates once in a while. It was running fine, then suddenly starting behaving this way a few updates ago. I was hoping it would just go away with a new update, but no such luck.

    Our host does run Varnish, I think. We had issues a long time ago and changed settings, so I’m not sure if it’s still running on this site.

    Tyler, I’ll get the credentials for you. Bit me a little bit and I’ll get the contact form filled out.

    Thanks again,

    Joe