{"id":102673,"date":"2012-11-20T00:19:05","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T05:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wpmu.org\/?p=102673"},"modified":"2013-04-27T20:59:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-28T00:59:11","slug":"zapier-wordpress-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/zapier-wordpress-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Save Time And Money By Syncing Your WordPress Site"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Zapier's
Still Easier Than Most APIs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More and more, I find my web browser’s tab bar taken up with applications. \u00a0I have my Gmail, Google Calendar, Asana task sheet<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, WordPress website<\/a>(s), Dropbox<\/a>, and\u00a0Facebook page\u00a0open so that I can easily move between each of those applications, syncing, posting, checking, and being notified.<\/p>\n

This method, if you can call it that, has plenty of drawbacks: \u00a0having all these tabs open creates a heap of distracting clutter in my tab bar; I waste time moving between applications and dealing with each one individually; and things have a way of falling through the cracks. \u00a0If only they could all talk to each other, so that doing one thing would cause the other actions to happen in perfect synchronicity, then my work could be made simpler and more efficient.<\/p>\n

Zap, Zapier, Zapiest?<\/h3>\n

An exciting new service that is being billed as “IFTTT<\/a>\u00a0for businesses”, Zapier<\/a>\u00a0helps you to connect your web applications so that an action in one causes something to happen in another. \u00a0Or, in their parlance, you create a Zap<\/em> (the syncing application) which is composed of a trigger\u00a0<\/em>that causes an action<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can create a zap using a pretty broad selection of applications (take a look at their library here<\/a>) in a variety of different combinations. \u00a0To find zaps that can be created using WordPress as either the trigger or the action, take a look at their\u00a0Zapbook for WordPress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Creating Zaps<\/h3>\n

People are often reluctant to sync applications because they have in the past been told that they could automate a time-gobbling website function only to discover that making and maintaining the sync became another massive time drain in and of itself. \u00a0Zapier has kept that in mind and made sure that their process is actually surprisingly easy and features a very user-intuitive interface.<\/p>\n

Normally, I would recommend their How-To videos (find’em\u00a0here<\/a>), but they are performed at a ludicrously rapid speed and recorded at a surprisingly low resolution. \u00a0Instead, I’ll walk you through the seven steps in the process of creating a Zap by putting together a sample one that connects a WordPress website to Twilio.<\/p>\n

Step1 –\u00a0Pick a Trigger<\/strong><\/em>. Let’s say that we have a website which tackles controversial topics and whose commenters are often likely to start flame wars. \u00a0We would want to keep a close eye on what is happening in the comments section of our website at all times. \u00a0So, in this scenario, it would make sense to have our trigger<\/strong> be when a new comment is posted on our WordPress blog:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot
Screenshot of “Pick A [WordPress] Trigger”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Step2 –\u00a0Pick an Action<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0Since we are monitoring the comments closely, we want our action\u00a0<\/strong>to notify us whenever a comment is published so we can respond immediately. \u00a0To do that, we are going to have Twilio send us a text message every time a comment is posted:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot
Screenshot of “Pick An [Twilio] Action”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Step3 –\u00a0Select your accounts<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0Once you have the trigger and action that you want, press the Create This Zap\u00a0<\/strong>button. \u00a0Zapier will then request that you enter the account information they need from the relevant web applications. \u00a0In this case, it is your (1) WordPress comment feed URL, (2) Twilio API info, and (3) the phone number(s) you would like to send the text message to.<\/p>\n

Step4 –\u00a0Build your Zap<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0This is the fun part. \u00a0Using their drag and drop interface, you can decide what information should be sent in the body of the text message. \u00a0Here I have added the Title, Publication Date, and the Body of the comment to my text message:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot
Screenshot Of The Zap Builder.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Step5 –\u00a0Apply any filters<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0The filters are there because you might not want to have the Zap applied in each and every situation. \u00a0 For example, we don’t want to have SMS messages triggered whenever we receive an annoying spam comment. \u00a0We will set our filter then to never trigger on any comment which contains the word “Viagra”:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot
Screenshot Of Zapier Filter Condition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Step6 –\u00a0Test your Zap<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0Try it out with a sample trigger<\/strong>,\u00a0using your existing content, to make sure that the Zap is configured the way you would like:<\/p>\n

\"Post
Screenshot Of Zapier App Test.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Step7 –\u00a0Enable your Zap<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0Your Zap is now ready to launch! \u00a0They present two options when finalizing your Zap,\u00a0Enable And Sync New Data<\/strong> or Migrate Existing Data,<\/strong>\u00a0 however, only the first option works at this time. \u00a0In other words, we can have the Zap trigger on future comments, but it does not allow us to make it backwards compatible and perform that Zap on previous instances of the trigger. \u00a0In this case, that would not be particularly helpful, but in other situations where you are performing a data migration, that feature could be incredibly useful.<\/p>\n

Sign Up & Plans<\/h3>\n
\"Zapier
What Does It All Mean? Do I Need Salesforce?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In order to start creating zaps (pricing here<\/a>), you have to first\u00a0sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their service. \u00a0They offer four different plans: Free, Basic, Business, and Business Plus. \u00a0The three premium plans (Basic, Business, and Business Plus) each offer more tasks per month, more zaps, and more frequent syncing, as well as access to their premium services (more on that below).<\/p>\n

When you sign up for the service, they actually start you off with a 14-day trial plan that is restriction-free, so you can get an idea of how the service works. \u00a0After the trial is over, you are automatically shifted to the Free plan and must opt into\u00a0<\/em>the premium plans (a nice touch, \u00a0in my opinion).<\/p>\n

The Free plan is designed for personal use and would probably be enough for any small website, while the premium plans are intended for an enterprise level of use. \u00a0Outside of the increasing allowances for tasks, zaps, and syncing there is another major difference between the premium levels and the free one: the premium services.<\/p>\n

At the paid levels you are able to sync up your WordPress site with a number of applications that are restricted to free users like Basecamp, MySQL, QuickBooks Online, Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk and a bunch more.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Reservations<\/h3>\n

If there is one reservation that I have about Zapier, it is that there are quite a few limitations on the Zaps that you can make. \u00a0Not every application necessarily has a\u00a0possible zap with another application and sometimes a zap may not offer the same functions as another zap (i.e. one zap may let you send comments as text messages while another may only allow posts). \u00a0When combined with the restriction on premium applications, free-level users could find it difficult to put together as many useful zaps as they might have hoped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how Zapier can sync your WordPress website’s actions with your favorite web apps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132064,"featured_media":103055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"blog_reading_time":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_tutorials_categories":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"tutorials_categories":[],"class_list":["post-102673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132064"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102673"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214225,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102673\/revisions\/214225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102673"},{"taxonomy":"tutorials_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tutorials_categories?post=102673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}