Over the course of a 12‑hour coding marathon in my home lab, I built a modest yet fully functional Automated Content Posting System. What began as a straightforward experiment quickly became a deep dive into home‑lab automation, where every configuration tweak and dependency install mattered.
At its heart, this system leverages advanced Reddit scraping techniques to pull trending posts and comments. From there, it transforms raw discussion threads into SEO‑ready articles crafted to perform well in Google searches, complete with optimized headings and keyword placement.
While the backend pipeline for data extraction and content generation was surprisingly smooth, integrating a responsive UI into my local environment proved more challenging than anticipated. Configuration quirks, package version conflicts, and unexpected restarts turned what should have been a quick setup into a lesson in persistence.
Midway through development, I took a detour into automated image generation—aiming to enhance each post with AI‑driven visuals. Although I gathered valuable insights on image pipelines, the complexity led me to shelve that feature for a future iteration.
In its current form, the system:
- Collects Reddit posts via custom scraping modules
- Generates unique, Google‑optimized text blocks
- Attributes original authors and links back to source threads
- Submits draft posts directly to WordPress using the WordPress REST API
On the roadmap are several enhancements: automatic creation of WordPress categories and tags, an in‑portal WYSIWYG editor for draft reviews, scheduled and live‑post capabilities (beyond simple drafts), and seamless integration of generated images to enrich the content.
This personal project is my sandbox for home‑lab automation and rapid iteration. If you have tips on Reddit scraping best practices, SEO content workflows, or deep‑dive experiences with the WordPress API, I’d love to hear your feedback—drop me a message!
