Content Spooler is a PHP-based, content spinning tool. The problem that content spinning solves is that any content you create has only a limited usefulness e.g. you write an original article, submit it to several article directories and eventually, your article appears on hundreds of different websites. Great for SEO, you might think, but duplicate content detection will see it’s the same content on each website and take that into consideration when evaluating any possible ranking benefit you might gain.
To get past this kind of duplicate content penalty, you could rewrite your article into several variants and then submit each one to a different article directory. Problem solved, you might think, but whilst all that effort rewriting might not bother you in the short term, after you’ve reworked a dozen or more articles this approach might not seem so appealing.
This is where content spinning steps in to maximise the usefulness of content by creating multiple versions with enough differences to get past duplicate content detection measures, but with minimal effort. By automating the process of mixing up and recombining content, you take away the hard slog and the possibility of any missed or duplicated combinations.
Installion and usage
Content Spooler needs to be run in a PHP environment so typically you’ll be uploading it to a web hosting account. I tested my copy on a local installation of Apache and PHP. The CSS in Step 2 of Content Spooler didn’t seem to like Internet Explorer 6 so I switched to Firefox instead.
Unlike other similar tools that rely on synonym swapping to make content unique, Content Spooler allows you to compose variations inline. This does mean you have to supply the variations of content yourself rather than relying on a thesaurus, but it’s a relatively painless affair and the resultant content will read much more naturally.
As part of the package, you’re supplied with both an installation video and user guide video. Both videos only last a few minutes, but that just reflects on how easy the software is to use.
Once I’d installed Content Spooler, which was simply a case of copying the files into my webserver’s file structure (uploading to a hosting account would be almost as easy), creating my first batch of 100 articles took no more than about 15 minutes (see the bottom of the review to download the generated articles). I could have created more or less variations just by specifiying the desired quantity. Output filenames can also be specified to a point, but what I’d like to see is the ability to spin the filenames too and also be able to output other file extensions such as .html rather than just .txt.
When you input content into the software, you specify the parts you want to be spun by using curly brackets and the pipe symbol. Creating two variations of a word is as simple as inputting {fantastic|fabulous}. The same technique can be used to specify variations on entire sentences or even paragraphs.
With inputs for author name, titles, a content body, resource boxes and categories, Content Spooler is primarily geared towards article spinning and it does very well.
I tested the standard version of Content Spooler, which only produces the spun output as individually enumerated text files. There are more sophisticated versions that make use of the categories you specify as part of the automated submission process, but I was unable to test this as I’ve neither the relevant version of Content Spooler nor the Article Post Robot submitted that’s suggested.
A nice feature is that after you complete the spinning of a particular project, the pre-spun content is saved as a template that you can return to at some point in the future. The uncluttered design of the software’s interface and handily located help information makes it very easy to use.
Personally, I see no reason why Content Spooler has to remain as a server script as it doesn’t need any Internet connectivity in order to function. To make it even easier to install for Windows users, the script could be packaged up as a desktop application.
Conclusion
As a simple 3-step process, if you have a need to produce variations of your articles then Content Spooler is a steal at any price under $50 so my suggestion is to grab a copy now. For a limited time, you can purchase a copy of Content Spooler at a discounted price of $15 as a Warrior Special Offer directly from http://www.contentspooler.com.
Update 23/12/2006
Content Spooler is no longer available at the special introductory WSO price of $15.
Screenshots
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Download Test Output Articles
Download the output I created in my 15-minute test.
