In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last five years, Slack is the premier tool for teams, remote and office-based, to stay in touch, manage projects, and interact. Since its creation, Slack has been adapted and updated to integrate with a variety of platforms, including WordPress.
Why would you want to integrate your WordPress website with a Slack channel? You’ll never miss a form fill-out again. Get notified of events, or even post directly to your site from Slack. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination.
Basic Integration
At the most basic level, your WordPress site can be leveraged to provide basic functionality for Slack. There are plenty of plugins available to integrate WordPress and Slack, but they are all pretty out of date and haven’t been updated to work with the most recent versions of WordPress. Using these plugins could leave your site with security vulnerabilities, so we wanted to give you an alternative to normal plugin integration.
At Pressable, we use a tool called Zapier to integrate Slack channels and our site. Zapier is an easy to use tool that allows you to connect things online in seconds. Signup is completely free, so head on over to Zapier and create an account using your Google login.
First, you’ll need to create a workflow. A workflow is what Zapier uses to link two separate tools together. Select ‘WordPress’ and ‘Slack’ from the menus provided.
Next, select the action you would like to perform. Zapier gives you the ability to choose from any number of actions, like an alert for a new post, a new comment, or a new user being added to your WordPress site.
Once an action has been chosen, in this case, a new comment is posted, tell Zapier what you would like it to do. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll just tell Zapier to send a direct message to Slack whenever it gets wind of a new comment.
Once you’ve created your workflow, connect the two apps to Zapier by logging in through their secure interface. WordPress and Slack are secure partners with Zapier, so you don’t have to worry about your information falling into the wrong hands. After syncing your accounts, you’ll choose the user you would like to notify.
Once your zap is set up, turn it on by turning the toggle to the ‘On’ position. It’s that simple!
There are tons of things you can do using Zapier, and many more integrations exist for programs outside of WordPress and Slack alone. Head over to the Zapier website and start building zaps to make your life easier. As their slogan says, ‘Zapier makes you happier.’
Zach Wiesman
Zach has 12+ years of experience with WordPress, from creating and maintaining client sites, to providing support and developing documentation. A knack for problem-solving and providing solutions led Zach to pursue a job with Automattic providing customer support in 2015 working with WooCommerce support, and now Zach has recently joined our team here at Pressable. Outside of work, Zach enjoys spending time with his family, playing and watching sports, and working on projects around the house.
