Auto-tweet new posts from WordPress

I wanted to auto-tweet my new posts on a faux-pas Twitter account. I wanted to try it out as an alternative to an RSS feed. This sounds like a simple problem which you would expect is solved by now. Since it is not that important to me either, I did not want to spend too much time on it.

Interestingly enough, it is not a solved problem. When you search for a plugin, I couldn’t find any. There are some, but they are not well maintained. WordPress gives a good warning when a plugin has not been updated for 3 versions or more. The ones I could find fell into this category.

I did find one which was still current, but it needed you to create a Twitter developer’s account. Ever tried recently to open a developer’s account on Twitter? Twitter asks you to substantiate your need for a developer account in – I believe – 150 words. “Auto post my WordPress posts” was the only thing I could come up with so that was a dead-end.

Then I searched for a solution on the web. Surely someone has solved this problem. You find plenty of old articles describing services which no longer exist or are overkill for my purpose.

I tried dlvr.it for a while, but it is not very reliable. It posted hours after I posted my story. It often skipped posts because I hit the limit. Not sure why because the free account allows for 3 posts per day and I only post once.

I gave it one last try and searched again. I stumbled on page 3 on IFTTT. IFTTT! I love IFTTT’s vision and goals but never found a real purpose for it in my life. One search revealed a number of RSS to Twitter applets and I chose the one which was the most popular. I entered my RSS URL and linked the applet to my Twitter account and voila it was working. Easy to set up, quick to check and post and is reliable.

Problem solved. ✅