Fence posts? No…HTTP POST.

Posts, let’s see, there are fence posts, post a letter, post-it note, and perhaps other types of posts. But none of them are what we are talking about here. Here we are going to talk about an HTTP post. What the heck is that? [Geek alert]

Before we talk about their usage, let’s break down the name. You have all seen the HTTP in front of web site URLs (such as http://zacaw.com). To get geeky, HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol and it is designed to enable communications between clients and servers. That means, among other things, it is how your browser (client) and the server the website you want to see is located. When you type in a URL in your browser's search window, you are actually giving a command to the server to send back the website code so the browser can display it.

That’s all well and good, and we could have a totally geek fest on how this all works and makes the page magically appear, but not today.

Here’s where the HTTP power is for Infusionsoft users.

Today we want to talk about a specific HTTP command called a POST. A POST is a command that is used to send data to a server. That data is usually used to create or update a resource.

Confused yet? No? Great….but let me give you an example anyway. If you had a Joomla-based website and were using our JoomFuse product to integrate that site with Infusionsoft, you would put an HTTP POST process in your campaign whenever you wanted JoomFuse to create or update a user in Joomla.

There are tons of uses of HTTP POSTs both inside and outside of Infusionsoft. In Infusionsoft POSTs are often used to send information to other 3rd party apps to perform functions that Infusionsoft can’t. My JoomFuse example above is one. Fix Your Funnel makes extensive use of POSTs to communicate to its solutions, as do many others (PlusThis, MyFusionHelper, ZenDirect, to name a few).

But POSTs are not just for getting Infusionsoft to talk to 3rd party products, they are a very general purpose method. Many products use POSTs to talk to them because it is easy and fast.

This was a very brief overview of HTTP POSTs and their use. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.