AI Assisted Article Generator

Overview

Article Generator (pkg_artigen) is a Joomla extension package that uses AI to create complete, research-backed articles. It grounds the AI in the brief's Sources URLs or web-search results, generates well-structured Joomla articles with auto-rendered banner images, and surfaces a vertical Status stepper so admin always sees where each brief is in the pipeline — all from within your Joomla admin.

The package includes a component for article management and a scheduled-task plugin (plg_task_artigentasks) that runs the unified Article Generator routine — one cron-driven loop covering Hopper discovery, unattended article generation, auto-publish, and on-demand batch jobs.

Article Generator is open source software released under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPL-3.0-or-later).

Installation

Step 1: Install the Package

1. Download the latest pkg_artigen package from the extensions directory or from Multizone Limited
2. Log into your Joomla Administrator
3. Navigate to Extensions > Install > Install from File
4. Upload the pkg_artigen_vx.x.x.zip file and click Install

Step 2: Verify Installation

1. Go to Extensions > Manage > Manage
2. Search for “Article Generator”
3. Ensure the component and the Tasks - Article Generator plugin are both installed and enabled

Step 3: Configure API Keys

1. Navigate to Components > Article Generator
2. Click Options in the toolbar
3. Pick your AI provider (OpenAI or Anthropic Claude) and paste the API key — required for article generation
4. Optionally enter a search-provider API key (Serper, Tavily, or Google Custom Search) for automatic web research — available on every paid tier from 3.5.26 onward
5. Pick a default banner theme and icon on the Article Banner tab
6. Click Save & Close

Step 4: Create the Scheduled Task (recommended)

1. Go to System > Scheduled Tasks > New
2. Pick the Article Generator task type
3. Set it to run every 5 minutes (recommended — covers all four phases with room to spare)
4. Save

Without the scheduled task, Hoppers with a cadence are documented but won't fire, and auto-generate / auto-publish settings stay dormant. Manual Run Now still works regardless.

Getting Started

There are two ways to drive article generation: one-off briefs, or Hoppers that produce briefs on a cadence.

Path A — one-off briefs

Path B — Hoppers for recurring topics Premium

A Hopper watches a topic, builds a curated list of source URLs, and produces one brief per cadence cycle. See the Hoppers section below for the full setup, or jump to the dedicated Hopper setup guide.

Your Article Generator Subscription

Article Generator uses a tiered subscription model. It is freely available as a trial; paid subscriptions raise the monthly article allowance and unlock a few workflow-scale features. Gates are applied at render time and never on save — if your tier changes, no data is lost.

3.5.26 tier restructure: every paid tier now gets the full single-article feature set including external web search, Article Refresh, banners, curated CC images, and Article Integrity. Tiers differentiate on volume and on the recurring-workflow features (Hopper, advanced campaign types).

API Keys & Service Providers

AI Provider (Required)

An AI provider key is required to generate article bodies. Pick the one that matches your account — both can be configured side-by-side and selected per brief.

• OpenAI — Sign up at platform.openai.com. GPT-4o Mini is the balanced default; GPT-4o for richer copy.
• Anthropic Claude — Sign up at console.anthropic.com. Claude Sonnet is a strong long-form alternative.

Source URLs (free, default)

Every brief carries a Sources field. URLs you paste here are fetched server-side and used as research material. No API key, no extra cost — the recommended way to ground articles when you already know the references.

External Search Providers (every paid tier)

When you want the AI to find its own references, configure a web-search provider. From 3.5.26 onward this is available on every paid tier — previously a Premium-only feature.

• Serper (recommended) — Google search results via API. Free tier at serper.dev. Hoppers prefer Serper because it also exposes a separate news endpoint.
• Tavily — AI-optimised search. Free tier at tavily.com.
• Google Custom Search — Direct Google API; requires a Google Cloud project and a Custom Search Engine ID.

Campaign Types

Every brief picks a Campaign Type. The type tells the pipeline how to research, structure, and (for the advanced types) spawn child briefs.

Built-in types

• Single Article — one brief, one article. Default for ad-hoc posts.
• Topic Brief — one brief, one article, source-grounded; tuned for explainer / cornerstone content.
• Competitive Marketing — one brief, one article; comparison-structure preset.
• Content Calendar Premium — spawns N child briefs spaced across a date range.
• New Product Introduction (NPI) Premium — staged sequence (Announce / Explain / Case Study) anchored to a launch date.

Workflow expander (Content Calendar, NPI)

Picking Content Calendar or NPI opens the Workflow expander on the Brief tab. Configure start/end dates and target count (Content Calendar), or launch date (NPI). The parent brief stays as the source of truth; child briefs are spawned with parent links so the relationship is visible on the Briefs list.

Hoppers — Curated Source List & Cadenced Briefs

A Hopper is “a curated list of source URLs on a topic, plus a scheduled brief from them”. It supersedes News Beat (removed in 3.5.56) and adds explicit verification + per-row curation. The full setup is in the Hopper setup guide — the summary below is the headline shape.

Lifecycle

1. Create a Hopper at Components > Article Generator > Hoppers > New. Fill in the topic, keywords, editorial defaults (tone, reading level, word count etc.), and pick a watch type: Search query, RSS feed, or URL set.
2. Open the Candidates tab and click Generate candidates. The watch type is dispatched to the appropriate handler (search provider / RSS parser / URL set) and each result is verified inline — the page is fetched and its body checked against the snippet to drop parasite-SEO and cached-spam URLs before they reach the table.
3. Curate. Each row's Status badge reads Good (verifier OK or admin override), Bad (verifier or admin marked it bad), or Unverified. Bulk actions: Mark good, Mark bad, Delete, Verify. The Good rows are the Hopper's source list.
4. Run Now creates ONE brief whose sources are every Good URL. The article-gen pipeline researches across them and writes a single piece that cross-references the publishers. You land on the new brief, ready to hit Generate Article.
5. Or pick a cadence — daily / 3x weekly / 2x weekly / weekly — plus a time-of-day. The scheduled task runs the Hopper at that time each cycle, producing one brief per run.

Unattended end-to-end (optional)

Two switches on the Hopper edit form make the loop fully unattended:

• Auto-generate articles — when on, the scheduled task drives every brief emitted from this Hopper through the article-gen pipeline without admin intervention.
• Final article state — Draft (admin reviews before publishing) or Published (article goes live as soon as it's generated). Routed through Joomla's standard article state, so any workflow you have configured still applies.

Time of day uses your Joomla site timezone. Daily fires AT the configured time each day; weekly variants use it as a not-before floor on the gap. The scheduled task itself must be running at or before the configured time of day — every 5 minutes is the recommended cadence.

Article Generator Scheduled Task

One scheduled task drives the whole unattended loop. Create it once at System > Scheduled Tasks > New and pick the Article Generator task type. Recommended cadence: every 5 minutes.

What the task does on each tick

Four phases run in order, each wall-clock-budgeted so a stuck phase can't starve the rest:

1. Hopper discovery — for every published Hopper whose cadence is due, calls produceBriefs() — one brief out per Hopper, sources = every Good URL on the Hopper. Manual-cadence Hoppers are skipped (they fire from the Run Now button on the Candidates tab).
2. Auto-generation — picks draft briefs whose parent Hopper has Auto-generate articles on, and ticks each one forward through the article-gen pipeline one step at a time. The same step machine the browser drives, just headless.
3. Auto-publish — for briefs that have completed generation with the Hopper's Final article state set to Published, flips the resulting Joomla article's state to live.
4. Batch queue — services on-demand jobs queued by the Generate All Steps button on the Briefs list.

Logs

Per-task logs live at administrator/logs/task_{id}.log.php. Phase-level events also mirror to administrator/logs/com_artigen.error.php so you can trace what happened on a quiet site without enabling Joomla's individual-task logs.

Banners Gallery

Every generated article gets a procedurally-rendered banner image. The Banners submenu lists every article that has one, with a category filter at the top, an inline preview thumbnail per row, and inline pickers for icon + theme.

• Banner Icon — the Font Awesome icon name (e.g. joomla, apple). Two icons can be combined by separating them with a comma (e.g. joomla,bolt).
• Banner Theme — one of roughly 140 named CSS colours plus a curated Computing Classics palette. Text colour is selected automatically by luminance so dark themes get white text and light themes get black text.
• Use Default — pre-filled with the component default colour swatch so you can see at a glance what “default” means on this site.
• Regenerate — toolbar button on each row re-renders the banner with the current icon + theme. Available on every tier.

Setup & Tips

The Setup & Tips submenu is the at-a-glance health page for your install. Use it after configuration or whenever generation is misbehaving.

• API key status — live check of OpenAI, Claude, and the configured search provider. Shows set, missing, or from environment variable per slot.
• Completeness Tips — checklist of common readiness items: default category, banner theme, image upload path, scheduled task created.
• Research Quality alerts — warns when briefs are running without source URLs and without an external search provider (i.e. the AI is operating from training data only).

Troubleshooting

Get support

Documentation and changelogs for every extension live at multizone.co.uk/extensions.