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How To Automate Your Word Press Blog With IFTTT?

Posted: 04 Jan 2013 10:49 AM PST

There might be several plugins available for synchronizing your social media updates with your Word Press blog, however today I will acquaint you with a method of updating your facebook status or tweets, automatically whenever you publish a fresh blog post, without using any kind of plugins at all.

This is where the easy and comprehensive use of the IFTTT makes its way in. Although it is not possible to automate your Word Press with social media entirely, IFTTT service makes the most of it simpler and easier.

To begin with, let me first brief you a little about the IFTTT service.

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT stands for 'if this then that'. This is a service that lets you create powerful connections between different applications through what it calls 'recipes' . All you need to do is tell IFTTT what 'This' and 'That' in your equation are.

The 'this' part is called the trigger which is independent. A common example of the trigger is "I'm tagged in a photo on Facebook".

The 'that' part is known as the action. This depends on the trigger and executes a desired function if your trigger part of the task is achieved. A common example of an action is "create a status message on Facebook".

This means if you are tagged in a photo on facebook, then a status message on your facebook shall automatically be updated.

Way Of Using IFTTT

You have an option of various channels to choose from, and automate your online life accordingly with the channel you choose. These channels are the basic building blocks of IFTTT, with each channel having its own triggers and actions. So yes , this service is not just restricted with the Word Press. You can easily post your new blog posts on your facebook page or even link your posts from RSS feeds with your Word Press. There are alot of channels currently available on the IFTTT. You can view the entire list of these channels here

Using Word Press With IFTTT

You will have to begin by making an account on IFTTT. Then you need to check if your XML-RPC is enabled in order work it with IFTTT. This service will allow you to amalgamate and integrate your WordPress 3.0 or above blogs, whether self hosted or hosted by WordPress.com.

In order to check if the XML-RPC is enabled, you will need to go to Settings>>Writing, and tick the XML-RPC option in the Remote Publishing Section, as shown in the figure below.

When done with the above step, you will be able to activate your Word Press channel from the IFTTT account, which will provide you the freedom of connecting your WordPress blog with other channels as trigger or an action, without using any plugin.

You can make various possible cases with WordPress. A few examples might be from Word Press to Facebook Fan Page, Word Press to Twitter, Word Press to LinkedIn. For more you can view the link of channels provided above in the article.

One of the biggest advantages of using IFTTT is lesser number of plugins in your blog page, which will enable a faster access of the blog for readers. As the number of channels for IFTTT is increasing and new channels are coming to the scene, it might be a good idea for you to remove the previous rarely used plugins and use IFTTT for this purpose to produce better results.