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WordPress is a popular content management system used by millions of websites. It allows users to easily create and manage their websites without the need to learn complex coding languages. However, if you need to connect to 3rd party services or automate tasks directly from your WordPress website, WordPress does not have a native integration with other services such as Zapier.
Fortunately, there are ways you can connect WordPress to Zapier without plugins. This way, if you post a new article, or service and would like your customers/followers to know right away. You can achieve this by automating the task using Zapier.
In this article, we will discuss how you can do this in just a few simple steps. We will explore two options for this integration with Zapier, one with a plugin, and the preferred one, without a plugin. Let us begin.
For this first part, we will explore how to connect your WordPress website to Zapier without a plugin. We will achieve this via the RSS trigger option from Zapier. To find the RSS URL of your website, follow along.
The first step in connecting your WordPress and Zapier without a plugin is using RSS feed URL. To find the feed URL of your website simply type this into your browser https://yoursite.com/feed. You should see something like this
If your website feed is not visible using that URL you can head over to this Zapier help page, there they have other ways that can help you find the feed URL of your website depending on how it is built. Another way it can be found is by inspecting the source of your page and pressing Ctrl + F and typing RSS you should see something like this.
It’s time to connect our RSS feed so we can start automating tasks with your WordPress site! First off head over to the Zapier website. If you don’t have an account create one for free. Create a new Zap and select RSS as your trigger.
First, we select the type of event that we want this to trigger. In my case, I’m using New Item in Feed. Because I want this Zap to trigger every time I post a new article on my blog
Next, we configure it. In the first placeholder, input the public URL of your feed https://yoursite.com/feed. Now enter a user with admin privileges to your WordPress site and a secure password on the password input. I’m going over it here, but Im assuming you already know how to create an admin user for WordPress. Now that we have our user created and set up in the trigger action we can keep working on our Zap.
In the feed trigger, Im choosing different content because I want this Zap to run every time I post a new article.
Now we test our trigger and see if it is retrieving any data. You should be on a screen similar to this one.
Now we proceed to add a step. The step is what we want the Zap to do once the trigger detects new data.
For this tutorial purpose, we want the Action to Create a new post to our Facebook Business Page, if you don’t have an FBP, I strongly recommend you create one for your business. You can follow our tutorial on how to create a Facebook Business Page for guidance.
Once you have your page connected, in the Set Up Action tab you will select the page where the content will be posted, and the message you want to post, this message will be the same for all posts, choose something that goes for every topic. In the link, URL select the link fetched from the RSS URL. Your screen should be similar to the one below.
Now, let’s test our actions.
The next step is creating a user for Zapier to use on WordPress so it can access your RSS feed without any issues or security risks associated with using an admin account or other sensitive information stored within your site’s database.
The reason I recommend keeping a separate user for Zapier is mostly for security. If you have to suddenly delete the zapier user you can do it without the risk of losing your main user access. Also if someone else gets access to this user, they will only have Subscriber privileges which mostly are view permission.
To do this, go back into your WordPress dashboard settings page and select Users from the menu on the left-hand side followed by Add New at the top of that page. Here you will need to fill out all required fields such as username, email address, etc., but most importantly make sure that “Subscriber” is selected under Role before clicking Add New User at the bottom right corner once everything else has been filled out correctly!
I don’t recommend this option of connecting the Zapier plugin to WordPress since it would often crash or present errors. If you check the plugin page it has poor reviews all because of the same reason. That is why the preferred way is how I showed you above. Same functionalities and fewer plugins for your site. But if you still would like to connect it via a plugin, first go to your WordPress plugin page and search for the Zapier plugin, install it, and activate it.
Once it is installed go to your Zapier dashboard, remember for this, you will need a Zapier account, if you don’t have one, you can create one here for free.
The process to this Zap is the same as above, the only difference is that instead of choosing RSS feed as your trigger, you will be choosing WordPress.
You will need to connect your WordPress account to Zapier, that is why we have to install a plugin. The zapier plugin has access to the WordPress Rest API, which is needed to know when you update or create a new user, post, or comment.
Since the steps are the same, you can go to this section and follow it. Remember you are now working with your WordPress directly, not an RSS feed.
