RocketPost — Guide

Thanks for buying RocketPost! This guide shows you how to install, activate your license, connect APIs, set your posting cadence, and get great-looking posts with images and SEO baked in.

1) Install & Activate

  1. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
  2. Upload your ZIP (e.g. RocketPost-Full-2.11.0.zip) and Activate.

Enter your license key

  • Open RocketPost in WP-Admin.
  • At the top of the page you’ll see the license box (the rest of the screen is softly locked until you activate).
  • Paste your license key (it’s in your order confirmation email) → click Activate, then Validate.
  • You should see a small ✓ Valid badge. Your key is stored and shown masked (last 4 characters visible).

If activation fails: check that your site can reach admin-ajax.php (no 403/401), and your host’s firewall/WAF allows outgoing HTTPS to the license server. Then try Validate again.

2) Connect your APIs

Open RocketPost (same admin page).

  • OpenAI API Key → paste → Validate → look for ✓ Valid. Used to rewrite the article into your house style with proper headings and links.
  • Pexels API Key (optional but recommended) → paste → Validate. Used as an image fallback when the source article doesn’t expose a clean image.

3) Add your News Keywords (the rotation)

In the News Queries card:

  1. Add one or more keywords/phrases that match your niche (e.g., “luxury hotels Paris”, “business class review”, “Maldives resorts”).
  2. RocketPost will rotate through these keywords on each run, find a fresh relevant article, rewrite a single post in a proper news structure, add H2/H3 sections, inline links to mentioned entities (e.g., hotel websites), and publish.

H1 titles

  • Automatically relevant and SEO-friendly.
  • Biased to include locations (city/country) when present.
  • Brands are not forced into H1 (to avoid spammy titles).

4) Set your posting cadence (schedule)

In the Publishing card:

  • Run every: enter a number (e.g., 12)
  • Units: choose Hours / Days / Weeks (e.g., “12 Hours”, “2 Days”, “1 Week”).
  • Click Save Settings — the schedule is (re)registered immediately.

Behind the scenes, WordPress Cron triggers RocketPost to do the same thing as Run Now (one keyword from your rotation, skip duplicates, publish).

Tip (reliability): If your site has very low traffic, WordPress Cron can be delayed. Ask your host to set a real server cron to call wp-cron.php every 5 minutes, e.g.:

*/5 * * * * curl -s https://your-site.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron > /dev/null 2>&1

5) “Run Now” (manual publish)

Click Run Now to immediately:

  • Pull one fresh article matching the next keyword in your rotation,
  • Rewrite it,
  • Add links and headings,
  • Attach an image (see below),
  • Publish right away.

You’ll see status toasts/spinner so you know it’s working.

6) Guides (City & Restaurants)—On-Demand

Use this to create a fully SEO-optimised guide on the spot (doesn’t affect schedules or News Queries).

Enter the destination/topic and click Generate — RocketPost builds a structured guide with sections, internal structure, and sensible headings.

7) Images (how RocketPost chooses them)

Every post tries to attach a featured image automatically:

  1. Source article image (Open Graph)
  • RocketPost fetches the original article page and extracts a proper og:image.
  • It skips publisher logos and Google/News proxy images.
  1. Pexels fallback
  • If the source image isn’t usable or missing, RocketPost searches Pexels using your keyword/title.
  • The first high-quality landscape image is used.

Duplicate protection: already-imported image URLs (tracked on the media item) are skipped on later runs.

If you’re not seeing images: confirm your Pexels key is valid and that the source article actually has a usable OG image. Some publishers block bots; in that case, Pexels will cover you.

8) SEO integration (Yoast)

RocketPost generates a unique focus keyphrase per post (biased toward locations or topics like “boutique hotels” when detected from the original article) and fills Yoast fields. You can tweak the keyphrase, meta title, and description after publishing if you like.

9) Duplicate post protection

RocketPost attempts to avoid posting the same article twice. If a candidate matches something you’ve already published recently, it moves on to the next keyword in your rotation. You’ll see this in logs if WP_DEBUG is enabled.

10) Best-practice setup (quick checklist)

  • ✅ License Validated (top of page shows ✓ Valid)
  • ✅ OpenAI key validated
  • ✅ Pexels key validated (recommended)
  • ✅ At least 3–6 News Keywords added for variety
  • ✅ Run every cadence set (e.g., 8–12 hours works well for steady flow)
  • ✅ Consider a real server cron for high reliability

11) Troubleshooting

“License server error” or key disappears on refresh

  • Re-paste your key → Activate then Validate.
  • Ensure no admin-ajax 403/401 and your host allows outgoing HTTPS.
  • If you changed domains, contact support to re-issue/transfer the key.

Validate buttons do nothing

  • Check for JavaScript errors in your browser console.
  • Clear any aggressive caching for /wp-admin/ and try again.

Posts are missing images

  • Add/Validate your Pexels key.
  • Some sources don’t expose clean OG images; Pexels fallback will handle it.

Schedule not running

  • Make sure Run every cadence is saved.
  • Verify WordPress Cron is being triggered (server cron or traffic).
  • You can always click Run Now to test immediately.

Seeing repeated titles on the same topic

  • Add a couple more News Keywords to widen the rotation.
  • The plugin will skip exact duplicates, but very similar stories can appear if your niche is very specific.

12) Uninstall / moving sites

  • Deactivate RocketPost to unschedule its cron.
  • Moving to a new domain? Activate with your license there (contact support if you need a transfer).

13) Support

  • Lost your license key? It’s included in your order confirmation email.
  • Need help? Email info@rocketpost.pro with:
    • Your site URL,
    • WordPress version + theme,
    • A brief description (and any error text from the screen or logs).

Enjoy effortless, on-brand publishing! 🚀

Lifetime Earlybird