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WordPress Automation – A Big Picture View

By Christina Hawkins | December 18, 2017
wordpress website automation

WordPress Houston Meetup presentation about automating WordPress internally and externally. Internal processes as well as automating marketing and business process. 

WordPress Automation

  1. Types of WordPress Automation
    1. Internal Vs. External
    2. Internal = Block spam, Backups, Schedule blogs, Compress Images
    3. External = Marketing, Business Processes, Data Collection
  2. Internal WordPress Automation
    1. Comment Management = Akismet
    2. Backups = WP Database Backup or BackupBuddy
    3. Schedule Blogs = Auto Post Scheduler
    4. Compress Images = ShortPixel Image Optimizer
    5. Social Sharing = NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
    6. Database Management = WP-Optimize
    7. WordPress Updates = Companion Auto Update
    8. Page Management = Broken Link Checker
    9. Security = WordFence
  3. External WordPress Automation
  4. What Can You Do With Automation?
    1. Collect Gravity Forms Entries and Log into a spreadsheet or notes app like AirTable, Evernote, Google Sheets.
    2. Log WordPress posts into a spreadsheet like Trello, Google Sheets, AirTable
    3. SMS WordPress posts so you know a post was published.
    4. Publish WordPress posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn with the right image then repeat on an interval.
    5. Manage customer billing and subscriptions with Stripe
  5. Zap Examples
    1. WordPress to Social Media
    2. WooCommere Orders to Email to Spreadsheet
  6. Before You Start
    1. Gather logins and login on separate tabs.
    2. If needed, find your API keys.
    3. Open all of your feeds and Social Media accounts. 
    4. Create one sample post, calendar item, form entry.
    5. Create a special user account for Zapier & IFTTT.
  7. Tools
    1. Zapier
    2. IFTTT
    3. Website URLs
    4. API Plugins PREPARE

Plugins and Resources that I referenced in the presentation.

Internal Automation Plugins: 

https://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2016/11/07/automating-wordpress-plugins/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortpixel-image-optimiser/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/companion-auto-update/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/auto-post-scheduler/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-recaptcha-integration/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-database-backup/ 
https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-networks-auto-poster-facebook-twitter-g/ 

Automate Externally Support 

https://zapier.com/help/wordpress/ 
https://ifttt.com/wordpress 
https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-zapier/ 
https://www.gravityforms.com/add-ons/zapier/ 
https://www.activecampaign.com/apps/wordpress 
https://www.activecampaign.com/apps/zapier

Posted in Marketing, Support, Wordpress

About Christina Hawkins

Since 1999, Christina has been designing and building exceptional websites. With many years of experience in creating thousands of websites, she understands the need for continuing education in her field and, therefore, is constantly learning and teaching others about internet marketing and digital processes. Christina is known for her highly-collaborative methods that help her realize the vision each customer has to successfully create engaging content to captivate targeted audiences across multiple platforms. Christina has honed her digital marketing and graphic design skills so that she can help B2B industries get their message out to their target audience in the right way. In addition to her ability as a digital marketer, Christina serves as a coach and mentor with WPElevation to other digital marketing freelancers, helping them grow their businesses. She is also a sponsor and co-leader of Houston's WordPress Meetup.

5 Comments

  1. Emily Brown on December 18, 2017 at 11:32 pm

    This article was super helpful and on point, thank you so much. I’m reading all the other articles as well, you’re very insightful and encouraging. Thanks!!!

    Reply
    • Christina Hawkins on January 10, 2018 at 12:46 pm

      Thank you, Emily.

      Reply
  2. James on February 5, 2018 at 12:13 am

    Hey Guys, Above all information is very helpful for us ,
    But I suggest one more powerful image optimizer plugin which is enables to open the page much faster by compressing the image and reduce it drastically maintaining its high quality,its very promising,
    Here it is: https://wordpress.org/plugins/way2enjoy-compress-images/

    Reply
    • Christina Hawkins on February 5, 2018 at 10:07 am

      Cool, James! Thanks for the additional resource. I’ll be sure to check it out.

      Reply
  3. Bastian Rappl on June 27, 2018 at 6:58 am

    Hi Christina,

    thank you very much for all the effort put in your video-presentation ! I like the approach to not simply listing all the different tools, but also showing the opportunities behind automation. Besides the known lists, this is finally useful information.
    Another great tool I would like to recommend to you for a new review or comparsion is Blog2Social. At work we use it as plugin for the WordPress blog. The tool makes it easy to share and schedule social media posts (on 15 different networks).

    Thanks and kind regards,
    Bastian

    Reply

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