What Is The Best Way To Automate WordPress Tasks?

Working in WordPress on site or blog can be boring and time-consuming. But why stress yourself when there are so many plugins and ways to automate wordpress tasks. There are great free and paid plugins available. One that stands out is IFTTT.  It is not limited to WordPress and most importantly it is FREE.

IFTTT is a service that lets other services or software (like WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, ect.) talk to each and perform actions when certain things occur.

It has quickly become the ultimate automation service for small tasks between Internet-connected services. It can help you update Facebook from WordPress blog.

Or you can automatically tweet every time you publish a new blog post. There are tons of plugins for that, here is a method that doesn’t require any plugins.

 

Automate WordPress Tasks With IFTTT

IFTTT stands for “if this then that.” For example, you can set up an IFTTT “recipe” (as they’re called) that goes something like this:

  • When I Like an image on Instagram, upload the image to Google Drive
  • When I add new post on my site, a link to it automatically gets published on my page at Facebook
  • Send an email in Gmail and have it post to your WordPress site

There are currently 108 different services or “channels” that you can hook up together. Each has its own set of triggers or actions. For example, if you make a status update on one service (a trigger), IFTTT will ensure an action takes place on another channel to, for example, repost that update.

Combine them just right and you can create a daisy chain of triggers and actions across a number of services, where just one post could hit almost every corner of your Web presence.

All the big names are supported on IFTTT. For social networking there is Facebook profiles, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. There are Google services like YouTube, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk.

Sync services like Dropbox, Box and OneDrive, plus blog services like WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger. There are plenty of other channels. This service goes way beyond WordPress. You can select from one of the many available channels to automate your online life.

Automatically tweet your new posts. Automatically share your new posts on Facebook page or profile. Can pull posts from RSS into WordPress etc. Sky is the limit.

 

automate wordpress tasks on your website or blog

Go to their website and create your account. It is fast and easy. IFTTT works with all WordPress.org self-hosted blogs (version 3.x and above) and WordPress.com blogs as well.

If you don’t know difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com check my comparison table to see more info.

Tasks are divided in so-called recipes. Recipes can be shared, making it easy for you to customize them to your needs or easily activate. Or you can create a great IFTTT task yourself.

Possible IFTTT uses with WordPress

  • WordPress to Facebook Fan Page
  • WordPress to Facebook Profile
  • WordPress to Twitter
  • WordPress to Google+
  • WordPress to Tumblr
  • WordPress to Evernote
  • WordPress to LinkedIn
  • WordPress to Delicious
  • WordPress to Google Calendar
  • WordPress to Bitly
  • WordPress to SMS
  • WordPress to Phone Call
  • WordPress to Instapaper
  • WordPress to Read Later
  • WordPress to Blogspot (Blogger)
  • WordPress to Diigo
  • WordPress to Buffer
  • WordPress to DropBox
  • WordPress to Google Drive
  • WordPress to Flickr
  • WordPress to Zootool
  • WordPress to Hootsuite
  • WordPress to SkyDrive
  • WordPress to App.net

A lot of those could be reversed in order as well.

 

Examples of IFTTT to Automate WordPress Tasks

Facebook

1. Every new post on your site gets published on your page at Facebook. You can also use SNAP plugin for that.

2. Links posted to a Facebook page are posted to WordPress as posts.

3. Published photo on Facebook page gets published to your WordPress site as a photo post along with the caption, and a link to the Facebook page.

 

Twitter

1. When you create a new post on WordPress, a tweet is made on your account.

2. When you make a tweet on Twitter, it gets posted on your WordPress site and will include a link and even a photo.

3. Make a tweet with a specific hashtag, and a WordPress post will be created.

 

Gmail

1. A new post on WordPress creates an email in Gmail with the post title, post URL, and post content. (You can set to send to specific Google+ Circles if you like.

2. Send an email in Gmail and have it post to your WordPress site.

 

YouTube

1. When you upload a new YouTube video on you channel, it gets posted to your WordPress site.

2. When you add a YouTube video to your favorites, a new post with the video is added to your site.

 

Instagram

1. Add a new photo to Instagram and have it automatically posted to your site.

2. New Instagram photo with a specific tag gets posted to a specific WordPress category.

3. New Instagram videos get posted to WordPress.

 

Tumblr

1. New posts published to a WordPress blog get published to a Tumblr blog.

2. New posts published to Tumblr get published to WordPress.

3. Tumblr photo posts get posted to WordPress.

 

Using IFTTT Summary

IFTTT is a great tool, and it can definitely help automate wordpress tasks. You can probably easily delete a few plugins that you may have running on your site and have IFTTT do those tasks.

Imagine putting these services to work with IFTTT, automating all the annoying things you have to do. No more cross posting, no more extra emailing, no more backing up with cut-and-paste jobs.

Do you know any other service like If This Than That? Have you used it? Let me know in comments below!


DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.

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