If This Then That

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I’ve been tinkering around with my blog. Every time that I post something here, I routinely share it on my Facebook timeline. So I’ve been looking for a way to have this happen automatically without me having to click the Facebook share button after publishing the post. Yes, I’m that lazy.

After a few minutes of research (read: Google), I found out that the option to automatically share blog posts on the Facebook Note app has been removed a few years back. Unfazed, I continue to look for other alternatives on how I can accomplish such a daunting task. I then discover this site or app called IFTTT.

IFTTT stands for If This Then That. If you ever paid attention to your computer teacher during Excel classes, then I’m pretty sure you’re aware of If-Then statements (this sentence right here is an example of an if-then statement). This is basically what IFTTT does.

You can have any app that is connected to the internet do an if-then command with IFTTT. For example, you can automatically have a YouTube video downloaded to your Google Drive the moment it is uploaded. Or you can have photos from email attachments saved directly to your Dropbox account. In my case, I set the command to share a blog post on my Facebook timeline once I publish it.

Let me list down in detail how it works. Here we go: 
  • The apps that you can connect with IFTTT are called channels.
  • Each if-then command is called a recipe.
  • The channel that you assign to if is called the trigger.
  • The channel that you assign to then is called the action.
  • You create a recipe by assigning what happens in the trigger and what action happens after the trigger is done.
My IFTTT recipe consisted of Blogger publishing a new blog post as the trigger, and share on Facebook profile as the action. 

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of possible recipes you can come up with. 

And now I have published this post and shared it on Facebook all on one go. Cheers!



Photo source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/IFTTT_Logo.svg/2000px-IFTTT_Logo.svg.png

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