Update: You can now download this WordPress SMS plugin.
If you thinking free SMS stop right there. Here’s an idea to send SMS alerts via WordPress to users who have subscribed using their mobile phone numbers on your WordPress blog.
Has this SMS Text Message WordPress plugin been done before you might be thinking. Well yes and no. Michael Torbert has created a plugin for WordPress called SMS Text Message that…
Allows a reader to submit their phone number through a sidebar widget. The blog owner then can periodically send alerts, updates, etc via SMS to everyone at once.
Here are some of the features.
- includes built-in widget
- easy, simple administrative management interface
- support for all the major wireless carriers
Unfortunately the SMS WordPress plugin that already exists does not support all major wireless carriers and only supports US carriers. The majority of wordpress users who might even need this service will most likely be outside the iPhone toting US of A. They’ll probably be in the devleoping wwworld where Nokia/Symbian rules.
How would one go about improving the WordPress SMS plugin to support the majority of mobile networks throughout the world? You could use a SMS gateway API that covers over 220 countries
and nearly 900 different mobile networks.
Built-in SMS Subscribe/Unsubscribe Widget or Code Snippet.
This is a feature that must be included with the new and improved WordPress SMS Alert plugin. Iy will allow users to easily subscribe to SMS alerts from your blog’s sidebar or any post or page on your wordpress blog with a simple code snippet like .
SMS Administrative Management Interface
So when a blog owner is logged into their wordpress blog they can easily do the following:
- Enter API credentials that enable the blog owner to send SMS messages to the people who have subscribed via the SMS alert widget. The subscribers will receive the SMS for free or at normal carrier rates but the blog owner will pay for the sending of the SMS.
- Quickly send an SMS alert to all subscribers from the WordPress administration area when logged in or if you update your blog infrequently, send an alert every time you wirte a new article on your blog (this could become expensive to the blog owner or irritating end user. This all depends on the blog so allowing both options would be ideal. there should definitely be an option to toggle the post to SMS feature on or off. Default should be off.
- View the subscriber count in order to budget your SMS Alert sending costs
An example of how Your Web AddiCT would use this WordPress plugin is to allow you to subscribe to competition alerts for when there will be another mobile phone give away. Would you find this WordPress SMS plugin useful or does a SMS plugin like this already exist? Let me know in the comments.
Update: You can now download this WordPress SMS plugin.
