Auto tweet DNN Community blogs?

You see it, you read it and you want to share it to your Twitter followers: a new blog entry in the DNN community blog. And that is part of your normal cycle for spreading the word.

But there are times (yes, it does happen), that you do not jump directly to the DNN community blog page on  DNNSoftware.com first thing in the morning. So, you are not aware that there is a new DNN Community blog entry. And as a result, you deprive your Twitter followers of the important (well, mostly important) news about DNN from community members. Not good!

How can you solve that?

You never ever want your Twitter followers to know that you have missed a blog entry, so you are looking for ways to prevent that. And luckily enough, you know a bit about computing and automating tasks. And what better solution is there than to find someone (something) else to do it for you? 

Of course, you want that service to be free, because your budget is limited and should be used for other things. Informing your Twitter followers is OK, but it should not cost much to do so.

Behold! You have found that free service: IFTTT (If This Than That). A nifty free website/service that you can use to create what they call recipes: if something happens here or there, do that. Sounds easy enough.

You have registerd yourself and connected your Twitter account as a channel in IFTTT. That was easy. Now you are ready to bake the recipe.

Automating the tweets with IFTTT

You executed the following steps in IFTTT:

1. Create a Recipe and click on the This link
2. You type in RSS in the Search Channel box and select the Feed channel
3. You select the New Feed item box
4. IFTTT asks the Feed URL You can grab that yourself from the rss feed icon on the DNN Community Blog page, or use the following URL:

   https://www.dnnsoftware.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Rss.aspx?TabID=142&ModuleID=1197&MaxCount=5

5. Click on Create Trigger. You are halfway done!
6. Now click the second action in the recipe: That
7. Choose the Twitter Channel
8. Select the Post a tweet box
9. Accept the default tweet text and click Create Action
10. Check the Receive notification checkbox (optional) and click on Create Recipe

Bingo, you are done! None of your twitter followers has to miss a DNN Community blog anymore, it works even while you are away!

P.S.

If you have read this blog entry, please follow the steps outlined above. It helps to spread the word about DNN and efforts of DNN community members.