Howto: SMS Notification New WDC Reviews

For those of you who prefer text messaging (SMS) for being notified on things, here's how I get notified of new Reviews of my work:

First, you need a Gmail account. If you don't have one already, you can create one here: mail.google.com

Next, you'll need to link that Gmail account to your writing.com account: http://www.writing.com/main/my_account.php?action=ea_form&type=personal

After that, you need to change your notification settings to send an email to your external email account in the event you get a review: http://www.writing.com/main/my_account/action/edit_prefs#Notify

Once that's done, now you need to create an account over at https://ifttt.com

ifttt takes different services and chains them together with If This Than That logic. "This" is the trigger, and "That" is what you want to do when the trigger occurs. So create a new "recipe" in your new ifttt account and we want to select "Gmail" for "This", and you want to search for a specific keyword, namely: writing "comment for"

"That" will be "SMS", and I put in the Text Message: New <Subject>

You will have to link ifttt to your gmail account giving ifttt access to run the search, and you will have to also link your cell phone (there's a test text message it will send you, and you have to "Agree" to it) but once that's all done, then any time you get a new review, you will get text messaged "New Comment for <Title of your Work>"

There's a lot of neat things you can do with ifttt (I use it to text me my favorite sport team's final score as well as the weather the day before... but you could also text ifttt and it can call you back--a way to get out of awkward conversations/dates )

Hope you find this helpful!