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Telegram

Connect Telegram and every post you publish goes out as a message to the Telegram chat, channel, or group of your choice. Great for broadcasting to a Telegram channel of subscribers, or just pinging yourself.

Telegram requires a small bit of one-time setup in the Telegram app itself — creating a bot and finding the chat ID — but once that’s done, the Structura side is quick.

What gets posted

A single Telegram message per publish:

  • Post title in bold.
  • Short summary from the excerpt or first paragraph.
  • Link to the article on your WordPress site.
  • Featured image as the message’s photo attachment (when available).

What you need

Two pieces of information:

  • A bot token from Telegram’s BotFather.
  • A chat ID — the numeric identifier of the chat, channel, or group you want the bot to post to.

Both come from the Telegram app itself; steps below.

Create a Telegram bot

Do this once, in Telegram:

  1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather. Start a chat.
  2. Send /newbot.
  3. Give the bot a display name (e.g., “Structura Publisher”).
  4. Give it a username ending in bot (e.g., mysite_structura_bot).
  5. BotFather replies with a bot token — a long string like 123456:ABCdef.... Copy it. This is a secret.

Get your chat ID

The chat ID tells the bot where to post.

For a private chat with yourself:

  1. Message your new bot (search for its username, click Start). Send it anything — e.g., “hi.”
  2. In a browser, visit https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates replacing <TOKEN> with the bot token.
  3. In the JSON response, find "chat":{"id":123456789,...}. That number is your chat ID. For private chats it’s a positive integer.

For a Telegram channel:

  1. Add the bot as an administrator of the channel (Channel settings → Administrators → Add admin).
  2. Post something in the channel.
  3. Visit the same getUpdates URL. The chat ID for a channel is a negative integer prefixed with -100, e.g., -1001234567890.

For a Telegram group:

  1. Add the bot to the group as a regular member.
  2. Have someone post in the group.
  3. Same getUpdates URL — chat ID is a negative integer.

Connect

  1. In wp-admin, go to Structura → Channels.
  2. Click the Telegram card. The install panel opens.
  3. Paste the bot token into the Bot token field.
  4. Paste the chat ID into the Chat ID field.
  5. Click Connect. Structura calls Telegram’s getMe and sendMessage to verify the credentials and that the bot can post to the chat. If both succeed, the install panel shows Connected and the target chat receives a “Structura connected” test message.

What can go wrong

  • Unauthorized on connect. The bot token is wrong or the bot was deleted.
  • chat not found. The chat ID is wrong, the bot isn’t a member of that chat/channel, or the bot isn’t an admin of the channel.
  • Forbidden: bot can't initiate conversation with a user. For private chats, the bot can only message you after you’ve messaged it first. Send your bot a message and retry.
  • Message sent but no image. The post’s featured image may be too large (Telegram rejects files over 10 MB for bots) or its URL may not be publicly reachable.

See A channel shows “failed” for the full playbook.

Rotating the token or moving chats

  • New token: regenerate with /token in BotFather, then click Reconnect on the Telegram install panel and paste the new one.
  • New chat: grab the new chat ID the same way, then paste it in the install panel. You can keep the same bot.
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