This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Automatic Post Tagger

Description

This plugin automatically searches posts when they are published/imported/saved and adds new taxonomy terms (tags by default) if term names or related keywords from a user-created keyword list are found.

Features

  • Compatible with several post import plugins (FAQ #4)
  • Supports custom taxonomies and post types; for example, APT is able to categorize posts (FAQ #6), add tags/categories to WooCommerce products (FAQ #7)
  • Supports UTF-8 characters, non-Latin and logographic alphabets (FAQ #5), including Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic etc.
  • Bulk tagging tool (with a scheduler) for processing multiple posts
  • Import/Export tools (CSV & JSON format support)
  • Configuration groups with custom rules for selected keyword sets; wildcard (regex) support for related keywords

See Screenshots and FAQ for more information.

Screenshots

  • Administration interface
  • Bulk tagging in action
  • Widget for creating new keyword sets displayed next to the post editor

Installation

  1. Install and activate the plugin.
  2. Configure the plugin (Settings > Automatic Post Tagger).
  3. Create or import keyword sets. Term names represent taxonomy terms (tags by default) which will be added to posts when they or the keyword set’s Related keywords are found. Keyword sets can be categorized into custom Configuration groups with custom settings for selected keyword sets.
  4. Publish/import/save posts. You can also use the Bulk tagging tool to process all of your already existing posts.

FAQ

Installation Instructions
  1. Install and activate the plugin.
  2. Configure the plugin (Settings > Automatic Post Tagger).
  3. Create or import keyword sets. Term names represent taxonomy terms (tags by default) which will be added to posts when they or the keyword set’s Related keywords are found. Keyword sets can be categorized into custom Configuration groups with custom settings for selected keyword sets.
  4. Publish/import/save posts. You can also use the Bulk tagging tool to process all of your already existing posts.
#1: How to make the plugin add taxonomy terms to drafts as well?

By default only newly published and imported posts are automatically tagged. If you want to see the plugin in action when writing new posts or editing drafts, enable the option “Run APT when posts are: Saved” and add the post status “draft” to the option “Allowed post statuses”.

#2: PHP’s “max_input_vars” limit has been exceeded and I can’t edit or delete keyword sets/configuration groups.

You may encounter this problem if the plugin stores a lot of keyword set/configuration group items in the database and your PHP configuration prevents input fields from being submitted if there’s too many of them. You can fix this by doing one of the following:

  1. Change the “Item editor mode” to “CSV”.
  2. If you can modify your PHP configuration, change the variable “max_input_vars” in your php.ini file to a higher value (1000 is usually the default value).
#3: I’m getting the “Maximum execution time of XY seconds exceeded” error when tagging posts.

This might happen if your posts are large or you have a lot of keyword sets in the database. Here’s what you can do:

  1. Remove some of your word separators (or enable the option “Replace non-alphanumeric characters with spaces” to ignore them completely).
  2. Enable the option “Analyze only XY characters starting at position XY”.
  3. Lower the number of posts tagged per cycle when using the Bulk tagging tool.
  4. If you can modify your PHP configuration, change the variable “max_execution_time” in your php.ini file to a higher value (30 is usually the default value).
#4: Which post import tools are compatible with APT?

So far APT has been successfully tested with the following:

If your post import tool/plugin is not compatible with APT, you can still set up recurring bulk tagging events to regularly process new posts.

#5: Can APT tag posts written in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and similar languages?

Yes. You will have to enclose every single logogram used as a related keyword in wildcards or disable automatic input correction and replace all word separators with one string separator. See this page for more information.

#6: How to add categories to posts?

Add the taxonomy “category” to configuration groups of your choice.

#7: How to add tags and categories to WooCommerce products?

Add the post type “product” to the option “Allowed post types”, enable the option “Run APT when posts are: Saved” and add taxonomies “product_tag” and “product_cat” to configuration groups of your choice.

Reviews

December 22, 2021
As of 2021-12-21 this plug-in still works. At least, I've not found any issues with it. I give it four stars, as I think the plug-in interface could do with some refinement. But it otherwise works well. After a LOT of searching online, this was the only plug-in solution I found for automatically applying categories and tags to existing posts, and new posts (I don't need that feature, but it's there).
October 27, 2020
I've tried a few out there, but nothing comes even close to Automatic Post Tagger in terms of interface and features. - You can define auto-tagging groups for any existing taxonomy (including custom taxonomies and even the less obvious post_format, used by some themes) which is very handy. - It can match string patterns, which makes it very powerful and efficient. - The comprehensive settings make it very flexible. - You can decide to trigger auto-tagging on post with specific type and statuses, on specific events (publishing, update, import, save). - You can match words in the post title, content, excerpt. - You can trim the content to be analysed for matches to the first X characters. - You can append or replace existing terms, or skip posts that already have terms. - You can limit the number of added terms. - You can batch tag existing post (with very acute control and tracking). The batch process is fail-safe and soft on server load, even with tens of thousands of posts. - It works perfectly along with any syndication plugin (I've been using it along with FeedWordPress and WPeMatico) allowing you to auto-categorize automatically a very large flow of articles using your own "natural intelligence"! Automatic Post Tagger hasn't been updated for the last 5 years but it is still working flawlessly with the latest version of WordPress (5.5.1 as of now).
September 3, 2020
It's awesome. I tagged about 330 of my posts without any problem and it works just as it should. Huge thanks and well-done to developers. You're great.
August 17, 2020
The only plugin I have come across that gives 100% satisfaction. How I wish the developer could come back and keep it up to date. Save the plugin!!
November 14, 2022
i had to change my review as my support question was closed after i asked for any other alternative of this plugin that was last updated on 2015. there was no reason to close the support threads at all if you dont updatete this plugin anymore. let people at least discuss on it.
Read all 78 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Automatic Post Tagger” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

1.8.2 (2015-11-18)

Fixed:

  • Bug responsible for deleting terms even if no new ones were found
  • Issue with saving post types

1.8.1 (2015-06-07)

Fixed:

  • Bug responsible for adding blank elements into the related keywords array

1.8 (2015-06-07)

New features:

  • Multiple taxonomies support
  • Configuration groups
  • Automatic backups before updating
  • New import/export tools for plugin settings and configuration groups; JSON format support
  • Bulk tagging scheduler

Other changes:

  • New “At a glance” widget
  • The APT meta box is now displayed next to the post editor only if the post type of the currently edited post is listed among the allowed post types.
  • Backward compatibility for older versions implemented
  • APT now uses the function “wp_set_object_terms” to add terms to posts instead of “wp_set_post_terms”
  • CSV structure is checked when importing items
  • If database options are missing, default plugin data are automatically recreated; suboptions are now automatically added during the update if they’re missing
  • Submitted post types and taxonomies that aren’t registered can’t be saved
  • Keyword sets sets can no longer be deleted by leaving the term names empty
  • Update nags can be hidden now
  • Grammatical numbers in messages corrected
  • Backup filenames now contain version and a timestamp
  • Several suboptions renamed
  • Integer matching regex patterns updated
  • New functions replaced repeated blocks of code
  • Multiple bug fixes
  • New terminology
  • New PHPDoc comments
  • Minor appearance changes