Automattic Introduces Postbot App for Scheduling Photo Posts

Today Automattic introduced Postbot, a new stand-alone application for scheduling image posts. The new app allows users to upload multiple images and schedule them out over several days. Postbot creates a post for each image and automatically posts them to the selected blog, saving users the trouble of manually scheduling each one.

When using Postbot, you’ll need to connect via WordPress.com. The app is automatically connected to your main WordPress.com blog but once logged in you’ll have the option to connect other sites. Self-hosted WordPress sites can use the app via Jetpack with the JSON API module enabled.

Right now, you can only use the app from a desktop or mobile browser and John Godley, representing Automattic, says that a mobile app is not currently in the works. He elaborated on why they chose to create it as a standalone web app:

Postbot lets us provide a very targeted set of features to anyone with a WordPress.com or WordPress.org/Jetpack blog (or both), from one central place. It’s already mobile-ready so a special mobile app isn’t currently planned.

The experience of visiting Postbot.co from a mobile browser is not unlike using a mobile app. Those who plan to use it frequently via mobile can easily set a bookmark for quick launch while on the go.

Postbot Puts Photo Publishing on Autopilot

Postbot allows you to upload up to 50 photos at once to be published individually on different dates. While the images are uploading you can edit the titles, tags and content for each. The option to set a category is planned for a future version.

Scheduling allows you to set the number of days between posts published with the option to ignore weekends.

The app doesn’t yet allow you to set the featured image, but it’s on Automattic’s list of feature requests for future enhancements.

Postbot is an excellent example of the kinds of apps that can be created using the WordPress.com API. If you want to take a peek under the hood, the app’s code was released under the GPL and can be found on Github. This means that anyone can host their own Postbot web app or create interesting variations that interact with WordPress.com services.

Postbot is potentially very useful for photobloggers who want to break up their posts into individual images. It could also be handy for automating sites that are dedicated to publishing photos every day, i.e. “The Daily Kitten” or “Your Daily Dose of Fun.” It allows these kinds of sites to go on autopilot for publishing fresh content on a regular basis. Publishing new posts multiple times per day is an option currently under consideration and may be a possibility in the future. We’ll be following the app’s progress as it adds new features based on user feedback.