Keep Track Of Changes To Your WordPress Site With The WP SMS Notifications Plugin

While there are plenty of plugins that help monitor changes to a site such as Stream, maybe you want a text message when specific events happen within WordPress. A brand new plugin called WP SMS Notifications, developed by Jeff Matson, fulfills this role. The plugin supports both International and US carriers without the need to use an external API. After activation, you’ll find the settings in a top-level menu item titled WP SMS Notifications. You can configure notifications for the following events:

Configuration Screen For WP SMS Notifications

Text messages are sent immediately after being triggered. If you have a limited amount of text messages as part of your mobile plan, be careful with enabling notifications for when a post is updated. Each time a draft post is saved, published, or a published post is updated, a notification is generated. This could quickly use up your available text messages, especially if you’re using it on a multi-author site.

Here’s the text message I received after updating a plugin. As you can see, there is just enough information to tell you what happened.

Text Message Notifying Me A Plugin Has Been Updated

One thing I’d like in a future version is a cleaner FRM message. Instead of detailed information of the mail server, I’d rather see which domain generated the message. This would be especially helpful if the plugin is used on multiple domains.

I asked Matson what motivated him to create his first WordPress plugin. He said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve done any real development work so when I entered the office on a Friday morning, I decided I would use that desire to make something useful for the community.”

Matson recommends that you don’t use this plugin in a production environment just yet. He needs a group of beta testers to discover bugs and is accepting feature requests to help him plan his roadmap. You can find the plugin on Github where pull requests are welcome. Support is being handled through the WordPress.org support forum.

If you have feature requests or feedback, let us know in the comments.