samjohnsson: It's just another mask (Default)
[personal profile] samjohnsson
Someone posted earlier about IFTTT and the way you can set up all sorts of nifty "recipes" to automate the web for you.

Well, it's been driving me nuts - one of my favorite writers has been writing in "Fandom A" - which I adore - but is still also writing in "Fandom B" - which is the sole reason I installed tumblrsavior. But as you all know, if you subscribe to a feed for an author, you can't pick and choose a fandom, and if you follow the fandom feed, you get every author.

Enter IFTTT.

This creates a recipe that will watch Fandom A's feed and email you any works by Author X. (Numbering here is wonky to align with IFTTT's steps.)

-1. Create an account on IFTTT.
0. Create a new recipe.

"This"
1. Select Feed
2. Select "New Feed Item Matches"
3. Enter Author X's name in "Keyword", and the Fandom feed address in Feed URL. You can get that by going to the Fandom A page and right-clicking on "Subscribe to the Feed".
3a. Click on "Create Trigger".

"That"
4. Select "Email". (Even if you have a Gmail. This is simpler.)
5. Choose "Send me an email."
6. Format what you'd like the email to include. "Entry Content" will automatically contain the Summary and all the Tags.
6a. Click on "Create Action".
7. Give it a description and click on "Create Recipe".

8. Sit back, and watch the filtered goodness come in to your inbox.

Caveat: because this works off the feed and not the author, it won't pick up Archive-locked works. Still, it catches the rest of everything, so it's a start!
sarken: two mugs of coffee on a bed with white sheets ([misc] right next to her coffee)
[personal profile] sarken
ifttt -- it stands for "if this, then that" -- is a nifty service that can automate some web-based tasks. For instance, it can e-mail you a reminder to take an umbrella if the forecast calls for rain, or it can take all the pictures you post on Facebook and put them in your Dropbox.

It can also do some fantastic things with RSS feeds. Like, say, the new AO3 fandom feeds.

Want all the new Kirk/Spock fic automatically added to your Delicious account? No problem -- you can even specify the tags or make it private. (It also works with Pinboard, but I'm not sure how the tags work over there.) Want an e-mail notification when a new Sherlock fic tagged "asexuality" gets posted? You can do that, too. Heck, if your favorite author writes in too many fandoms and you just want to know when they post new X-Men fic, you can set that up, too.

How does that work when AO3 only supports fandom feeds? Well, AO3 includes characters, pairings, and so on in the feed posts, and ifttt lets you trigger actions (like sending an e-mail or creating a bookmark) based on what's in posts instead of just "a new post exists."

There are a lot of different things you could do with it, and the process of setting up a task (e.g. "if there is new Buffy/Spike, then send me an e-mail") is pretty straightforward, so I'm not going to write up instructions -- instead, I'll just leave you with the suggestion that, if you're sad there's no character or pairing feeds, you might want to sign up for ifttt and poke around a bit. You might come up with a solution that's perfect for you.

June 2021

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