Generate: Run and Actions

Videos are not designed to be a substitute for instructions. Please refer to the detailed Documentation below.

Once you have defined your Group’s content, the Groups Table provides an overview of your Content Groups, as well as specific Actions that can be run to test, generate, manage generation and delete generated content:

Status Column

The Status column displays either:

• Actions that can be performed on the Group, such as:
  • Testing Content Generation,
  • Generating Content via Browser,
  • Generating Content via Server
• The current status of an action that is being performed, such as content generation.

These actions are also available when editing a Content Group:

Test

The Test method generates a single, draft Page, Post or Custom Post Type, with verbose error output if elements fail (for example, a shortcode).

When clicking this action, a message is displayed on screen confirming you want to generate a Test Page:

Once confirmed, an on screen notification will confirm whether the Test succeeded, with a link to the draft Page / Post / Custom Post Type:

Click the preview link to view the test content, where you can confirm correct working functionality, and make changes to your Group as necessary.

If error(s) occurred with the test, they will be displayed on the content.  For example, if a Wikipedia shortcode results in no content being found, you might see the following error:

Generate Methods

Three Generate methods are provided.

When any of these are run, the Content Group is locked and editing is prevented.  This is by design, to ensure that content is not edited part way through the generation routine.  Should you wish to make a change to the Content Group, refer to the Cancel Generation section below, which unlocks the Group, making it available for editing.

Generate via Browser

To generate content, and view its progress, click the Generate via Browser action.  A message is displayed on screen confirming you want to generate Pages:

Once confirmed, a screen will display showing the progress as each Page is generated, along with the time it took and the server memory usage:

Generate via Server

The Generate via Server action asynchronously generates content by using WordPress’ CRON system.   This means that you do not need to keep your browser screen open, as the generation processes is triggered and monitored on the server side by WordPress’ CRON system.

To generate content based on the Group, click the Generate via Server action.  A message is displayed on screen confirming you want to generate Pages:

To confirm if WordPress is running the CRON task, install the Crontrol Plugin, Generate via CRON and check for the page_generator_pro_generate_cron task.

WordPress’ Cron is disabled due to DISABLE_WP_CRON

If you see this notice when attempting to use the Generate via Server functionality, your WordPress installation has disabled WordPress’ Cron.

It must be enabled for this functionality – as well as other key WordPress tasks – to work.

Remove this line from you wp-config.php file:

define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );

Generate via WP-CLI

If your server / web host provides WP-CLI, you can Test and Generate Content through WP-CLI.

Refer to the separate Documentation covering how to use WP-CLI.

Understanding the Output Log

When generating via the web browser or WP-CLI, verbose logging is output for each generated item:

Depending on the Overwrite setting used on a Content Group, the first line of each log entry will vary:

Cancel Generation

Once Generation has started, it can be stopped in one of two ways:

1. Generate via CRON: In the Groups Table, click the Cancel action:
   
2. Generate: Either:
   1. Click the Stop Generation button on the Generate screen:
      
   2. In the Groups Table, click the Cancel action:
      

This will not delete any existing Generated Content.  To do this, refer to the rest of the Documentation below.

Generated Items

The Generated Items column displays the number of Posts / Pages / CPT’s generated by each Group.

Where content has been generated, two actions are available:

Trash Generated Content

This allows you to trash all existing Page(s) that were generated by this Group.

Delete Generated Content

This allows you to permanently delete all existing Page(s) that were generated by this Group.  This is useful if you made an error, and need to replace your existing Pages with revised content.