How to automate blog posts with IFTTT

Today is the last of my pre-scheduled posts, and possibly my last ever if I was eaten by bears. It's one of those "writing about blogging" posts, so you've been warned.

I use a service called IFTTT (If This Then That) to automatically do some things with posts I write on this site. Whenever I post here the site automatically:

• Tweets for me on Twitter with the title and link back.
• Similarly posts on Facebook, if I asked it to.
• Make a basic text-file backup and saves it to a folder in my Dropbox account. It doesn't save a copy of my images, if the post has any, but it keeps my words backed up, which I generally feel is more important.
• Posts a photo to Flickr and links back to the post, if I've asked it to do so.
• Adds a bookmark on my Delicious account, though truthfully I'm not sure why I do this.

IFTTT makes all of this possible via an assembly of recipes that connect disparate services. It's easy to setup and lets you do all kinds of fun things with services you probably use all the time, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more.

Want to automatically send  an email every time it rains in Portland? That's moronic, but you could do it!

Want to send yourself a text message everyday at 2am? Knock yourself out!

Or maybe you just want to setup a single, red light-bulb to turn on when you receive an email from someone? You can do that too weirdo!