Monday, October 12, 2009

Get Instant IP Alerts Via Twitter (Beta)

Sometimes you want to get an alert when certain visitors hit your site. You may already to this by enabling by tagging IP addresses and enabling Tripwire. Those Tripwire alerts are already available to you via RSS feeds. The RSS feeds are well suited to users who have RSS readers available or who want to get their alerts via the API. However, I've just added new functionality which is aimed specifically at users of Twitter.

If you currently use Twitter or want to set up a Twitter account, you may now use the new "TwitWire" feature. It's Tripwire via Twitter. If you enable this functionality you may now get a Twitter Direct Message (DM) when flagged IPs visit your site. You can configure which IPs will trigger messages and how often these messages are sent. This will allow you to track visits to your site via Twitter.com, Twitter clients (like Tweetie or Tweetdeck) or even via SMS if you have your Twitter account set up to send tweets directly to your mobile device.

This function is currently in beta mode, so please do give me feedback about how it's working out for you. To get started:
  1. Log in to your account
  2. Choose Twitter from the Options menu
  3. Enter your Twitter username and password (your password will not be saved)
  4. Enable Twitwire and submit the form
  5. Select IP Tagging from the Options menu
  6. Enable Twitter DM for any tagged IPs you wish to be alerted about
If you need to tag additional IPs, you can do so from the IP tagging page or directly from your log files.

That's all there is to it. Keep in mind that Twitter Direct Messages are private, so they will not appear in your public timeline and only you will have access to them.

As this feature is currently in beta mode, please do take a moment to provide some feedback after you've gotten started.