Need help installing Zap Calendar? Click here for a tutorial on installing Zap Calendar, or find out how to add additional functionality to your Zap Calendar site with the dozens of add-ons available for Zap Calendar.

Tutorial: How to Automatically Tweet Events Using IFTTT.com

We have written previously about how to automatically post upcoming events from Zap Calendar to Facebook using Zapier. This article will show you how to automatically post upcoming events to Twitter using IFTTT.com . IFTTT.com, which stands for, "If This, Then That", also allows automatically posting events to Facebook too, however, this tutorial will show how to post upcoming events to Twitter. This feature is available with all versions of Zap Calendar, including the Lite version.

 

 

There are two steps for setting up automatic tweeting: The Zap Calendar back-end setup and the IFTTT setup.

The Zap Calendar Back-End Setup

IFTTT works with Zap Calendar's RSS feature to decide what upcoming events to tweet and when to tweet them.  Through the Zap Calendar back-end setup, you control the timing of the when the event is tweeted.  From the Zap Calendar back-end, select the calendar section. Edit a calendar or create a new one, and edit the following RSS settings:

  • RSS Feed for this calendar: Yes
  • Use publishDate Tag in RSS Feed: Yes
  • URL Home Page for RSS Feed: {use URL of your web site home page}
  • Event format in RSS feed: Default
  • RSS publish mode: Daily
  • Weekly Mode - publish day: {not used}
  • Daily Mode - # of upcoming days: {Set to # of days prior to event to publish:1 for today's events, 2 for tomorrow's events, 7 for events 1 week away, etc.}

You should also ensure you have the time zone set in the Joomla global settings so the event is published when you expect it.

The Twitter post will include an event image if one is available.  The category icon image or the first image in the event description will be used if available.  Just in case neither of these images are available, you can set a default category icon in the Zap Calendar global settings.  This image will be used if the others are not available.

A setting in the calendar you may wish to update is the date format field, located in the calendar's event tab.  This option is used to format the event date in the event title.  For example if you wish to display just the month and day in the event title (no day of week or year), use "%B %d".

From the calendar manager screen, click the RSS icon to obtain the RSS URL.  Copy this URL, which will be used in the Twitter Feed setup.

IFTTT Setup

IFTTT's free service allows RSS posting of articles from RSS feeds to Twitter, Facebook and other sites.

To configure, go to IFTTT.com and create a free account. Click the "My Apps" tab and then click the "New Applet" button. Click the "+this" text on the page to begin defining your applet. Choose RSS then select the "New Feed Item" trigger.

 ifttt step2

To set up the RSS item, enter the RSS feed URL from Zap Calendar. You will find this in the calendar manager and clicking the RSS icon for the appropriate calendar. If you do not currently have any items in your RSS feed, you can increase the # of upcoming days in the calendar settings (see above) until you get at least one event for testing.  Once the setup is complete, you can revert back to the original # of upcoming days.

 ifttt step2b

 Click "+that"

 You can post a simple tweet with the event title and content. Or, you can be a little creative. For example a calendar of birthdays with the person's birthday in the title can be defined like this:

Happy birthday to {{EntryTitle}} -{{EntryContent}} {{EntryUrl}}

Click the "Create Action" button, then the "Finish" button to save and activate the applet.

ifttt step5

Summary

Posting events to Twitter is a great way to publicize your Zap Calendar events outside of your web site.  Using Zap Calendar and IFTTT, the posting process is very easy since it is done automatically on your behalf.  You don't have to worry about forgetting to tweeting upcoming events, since Zap Calendar and IFTTT will take care of it for you.