Continuing with my theme of syndicated feeds in Textpattern CMS, today I want to show you how to connect Textpattern to IFTTT. IFTTT takes the RSS feed connection a step further than Twitterfeed from my last article by increasing the number of things you can do with said feed. IFTTT stands for If This Then That, and it aggregates a whole bunch of data sources from the Internet, directing these sources to a whole raft of targets. I’m going to show you how to connect Textpattern with IFTTT – what you choose to do with it beyond there is entirely up to you.

For this walkthrough, there’s something a little different from the last one; I’m going to instruct IFTTT to process all articles from the Atom feed – when TwitterFeed was set up before, it was only parsing posts to the articles section and it used the RSS feed. The reason behind this switch is more exposure to how the syndication feeds work and using different options, giving you more flexibility.

As per the TwitterFeed tutorial, it’s important to check your feed passes validation before you connect it to IFTTT – this will minimise delivery problems due to invalid or illegal characters. Check your feed at FeedValidator, and resolve any problems before you proceed:

Now your feed has the green light for a clean bill of health, it’s time to attach it to IFTTT. Visit IFTTT and log in, creating a new account if you need one. You’ll be taken to your dashboard where you can create a new recipe, the IFTTT term for a custom-made…uhm…recipe of input and output data. Click on the Create link across the top of the browser to get started:

Click on the blue this and let’s get cooking! This is the last cooking reference today, I promise:

There are many input sources for IFTTT. We want a feed, so either scroll down to find it or use the search box:

Select the orange feed icon. Step two is to set the trigger on the RSS, either a new feed item or a new feed item with a given pattern match. For simplicity, let’s choose a new feed item:

Next, give IFTTT your Atom feed URL. I’m using the Atom feed for my site, which includes all posts in all sections:

Now we’ve set up the source of the data, let’s find a target. I want to receive an email when the feed updates with a new article. Click the blue that to continue the next stage of the process:

You will be shown a big list of targets:

As we want an email to be sent, find Email from the list or use the search box to locate it:

Select Send me a mail:

Then, fine-tune the email content as you desire:

You’ll then be shown a recipe summary. If you’re happy with that, click Create Recipe and you’ll be taken back to your dashboard with a confirmation. When the recipe finds a new article item from the feed, you’ll be sent an email to the address of your IFTTT account:

Done. Next: publicising your blog with feed aggregators.

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