Skip to content

Articles vanish from Article Manager

ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
in Need Help
Strange problem, as this was always working for me before. My articles vanish from article manager. 

I use Kontent Machine to create 50 articles and dump them to a local folder. Then in GSA, I double click on a project and click on:

Tools - Auto Fill --> Use Kontent Machine --> Import

I point to the folder, select all 50 articles and import. Everything works as it should, and I see 50 articles in Article Manager like in the screenshot below:


When I click Preview, I can see that the article gets built correctly.

I then click on OK. But now, when I double-click on a project and go back to the Article Manager tab, all the articles have vanished and been replaced with a single article that contains some weird broken spintax! Screenshot below:


Is this a bug? If not, what could be causing this? It screwed up two of my campaigns by posting thousands of junk text to thousands of URLs.

Again, I have used this workflow without issue before. In fact, if I open some of my older projects and click on Article Manager tab, those projects still have their articles intact. So it's just the newest projects that I create that are exhibiting this error.

Any help much appreciated!




Comments

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    My guess is that one of the imported articles might have some strange content in it that would cause this. If possible send me the stuff you import and I have a look.
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Thanks for looking into this. Below link is the folder with the 50 spun articles that I used for Auto Fill:

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    the problem is the 0x1a sign in the files...its a eof signal. You have to modify those files.
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    I searched a few files for "0x1" and didn't find any such characters. What specific string should I search for?

    Also, files were created in Kontent Machine and exported specifically "for GSA" Hundreds if not thousands of GSA users are using Kontent Machine with this exact worflow. Have you heard of this issue before with Kontent Machine? Trying to figure out if the issue is coming from the KM export or the GSA import
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    I used TextCrawler to batch search in all the files and I did not find any of the following in any file:

    0x1
    0X1
    Ox1
    OX1


  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    0x1A .. hexadecimal 1A ... not just 01
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    I searched for "0x1A" and that string of characters is not present in any of the text files.

    Please tell me exactly what character string to search for in the files so I can eliminate them from the files.

    Or maybe I am completely misunderstanding what you are trying to tell me? 
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Please keep in mind that I am not a programmer and just have basic technical knowledge wrt PCs, browsers, software...
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    search for this:
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    ? your search term is blank
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    You don't see that right arrow?
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Weird. I don't see any right arrow on my screen. All I see is "search for this: "

    I tried different browsers and also adjusted my screen resolution and still don't see anything.

    In any case, if I am using a search program like TextCrawler, how do I search for a right arrow across my text files? Is there some kind of ASCII code I need to search for? I don't have any right arrow key on my keyboard to input that symbol.
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    I tried copying and pasting both the ASCII code and the symbol itself from bottom this page:


    →     →

    Inputted each of the above in TextCrawler and searched text files and neither the ASCII code nor the arrow itself is found in any of the text files.

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    Well thats what I always try to say. It's the asci code 1A
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Sorry for my ignorance but I still can't find the EOF chars in the files.



    I have an idea to make this easier. If you could, please choose one of the text files I sent you, then paste here:



    1. The name of the file

    2. The EOF chars PLUS whatever text immediately surrounds those chars in the file. Then just bold the EOF and put in square brackets



    So for e.g.:



    1. SecCamsTone-two16.txt

    2. {home|house|residence} from [EOF Chars] {burglars|intruders|robbers|thiefs}



    That way I can easily just search for the text surrounding the EOF and
    can pinpoint it. After that I will be able to handle the issue no problem
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de

    1. SecCamsTone-two49.txt

    2. ...w.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/ubsÂÃ’ÆïÒâaÿÒâaýs-rogue-trader

  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Thank you. So I take it that this part below is the EOF character string and needs to be deleted in each file?

    ÂÃ’ÆïÒâaÿÒâaý

    Any idea why Kontent Machine would be producing this string in GSA export mode?
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Okay, I completely cleaned the text files of all ascii/hex weirdness. In fact, I created fresh text files - but I am still experiencing the SAME problem!!

    Here is an example of the new text file. Can you please check to find out what else is wrong with it? GSA deletes the articles from Article Manager:

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    The problem is that this URL is wrong anyway. It should have used the %XX encoding for none url-safe characters.
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    If I have a text file of thousands of URLs how do I convert to %XX encoding?

    The URLs were initially scraped using ScrapeBox and exported from there as text. Should I have instead exported as HTML? Or as RSS XML?

    The thing that confuses me is that I ran previous campaigns in GSA using the exact same workflow (thousands of URLs in articles) and I did not encounter this problem.
  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    I found an online utility to convert my URLs to %xx encoding:


    However, GSA still deletes the articles from article manager if I close and re-open the Edit window! So what gives?! All my campaigns are currently stopped due to this problem.

    Surely I am not the only person who has tried to embed his own URLs and keywords into articles before importing into GSA? There must be a tried and true workflow for this? Please tell me how to do it. 

    For reference, here is a text file of my ENCODED URLs. Is there anything wrong with them?

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de

    Well maybe it's some of your anchor texts as well!? I also don't know why you embed them directly in the article. You better use the %link% macro or let SER decide where to put the link.

    I also didn't say it's just the URLs that are wrong encoded. Maybe there are other locations with the EOF sign in it. Most people usually don't have such strange content thats why noone propably saw the problem yet.

  • ozzymandiusozzymandius Los Angeles
    Anchor text is all basic A-Z lettering, no symbols, not even numbers.

    Reason I wanted my own links is to increase relevancy of the posted articles, linking from specific keywords words to specific authority content. SER only links from random words in the article as far as I can tell.

    I will look into the %link% macro and see if I can go that way instead.
Sign In or Register to comment.