Twitter Extension

I’m a pain aren’t I?

I think Leevis LG Twitter extension already does a lot of this doesn’t it?

Nice work though. I think that the EE add-ons section doesn’t get updated all that much nowadays so that’s probably why it wasn’t showing. Either that or the add-ons need to go through testing by the development crew first before they get listed there.

Will definitely check this one out as well though as I have started getting into Twitter these days a lot more.

Best wishes,

Mark

Me again, sorry. Just installed the extension to give it a go and was wondering what exactly does it post when you create a weblog entry?

Does it use the title or something else to create the tweet?

Just concerned because if it takes for instance the body of the post then it is only going to use so much and so will get cut off meaning that I will have to think through my titles more carefully 😉

Just wondering what exactly gets posted?

Thanks.

Best wishes,

Mark

Looks simple enough 😊

@Mark - Just had a quick look at the code and it sends the Title of your post along with the url to it. You can change the pretext at the bottom where you set your username/password for twitter.

@M Swindler - I see you are encoding the url to the posts with the Post ID. This might not be the best way to do it for most folks since most people use the {url_title} instead.

Good job though 😊

@Mark - Just had a quick look at the code and it sends the Title of your post along with the url to it. You can change the pretext at the bottom where you set your username/password for twitter.

Yep just did that myself and see that it is sending the title now. Great minds think alike eh? 😊

@M Swindler - I see you are encoding the url to the posts with the Post ID. This might not be the best way to do it for most folks since most people use the {url_title} instead. Good job though 😊

Perhaps the extension could have a setting to change this if needed?

@M Swindler - I see you are encoding the url to the posts with the Post ID. This might not be the best way to do it for most folks since most people use the {url_title} instead. Good job though 😊

Perhaps the extension could have a setting to change this if needed?

Ultimately that’s probably what he should do, ya. Probably would be good practice to move the settings into the control panel along with that option as well 😉. Instead of putting them in the ext file itself. Although I shouldn’t be talking since I haven’t written any ext, plugins, modules myself heh.

I think Leevis LG Twitter extension already does a lot of this doesn’t it?

Yeah, I didn’t realize that was there. I was actually VERY surprised there was only one add-on returned with a “Twitter” or “Tweet” search in the EE Add-on section, which is what prompted me to write my own. Is there another EE Add-on repository? If not, how did you find that? A simple web search, perhaps? I’ll check this out at some point and see if there’s any overlap; at first glance it looks like the LG extension is just meant for Twittering from EE - if it doesn’t perform any kind of “simul-casting” (for lack of a better word) I may continue development.

I see you are encoding the url to the posts with the Post ID. This might not be the best way to do it for most folks since most people use the {url_title} instead.

I actually use the URL title on my website for both internal and permalinks; I chose the entry ID because EE recognizes either and the entry ID is more friendly to Twitter’s character limit 😊. Perhaps I’ll put in a switch in the settings…

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I really appreciate it.

Hi Michael,

There isn’t another add-on repository it’s just two things really :

1 - Leevi is well known around here as writing a lot of very good add-ons for ExpressionEngine so that was the first reason and

2 - I pretty much remember every single plugin, extension and module available for ExpressionEngine that’s out there. That comes from having an almost photographic memory and also spending so much time on the forums here 😉

What did you mean by simul-casting by the way?

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark,

By simulcasting I meant that I want to Twitter that I posted to my weblog, rather than Twitter directly from EE. The tweet serves to let my followers know when I’ve posted, almost like an RSS feed. I tweet other stuff separately, this just supplements that. Hope that makes sense.

Hi Micheal,

Ah yes I see what you mean now. I do believe however that Leevi’s extension does allow for this too. You can post to Twitter from the bottom of the page or there is also a Twitter tab that appears when Publishing an entry which allows you to send a message that way too. Quite configurable too.

I see you are encoding the url to the posts with the Post ID. This might not be the best way to do it for most folks since most people use the {url_title} instead.

I actually use the URL title on my website for both internal and permalinks; I chose the entry ID because EE recognizes either and the entry ID is more friendly to Twitter’s character limit 😊. Perhaps I’ll put in a switch in the settings… Thanks for the feedback, guys. I really appreciate it.

Actually twitter automatically takes a link and makes it into a tinyurl when submitting a tweet like this. The only reason I say to give the option is so google doesn’t find a second set of URL’s to the posts on your site so there is no duplicate content 😉.

What would be even more exciting is doing it the other way around: by sending a tweet to a particular user account (i.e. @yourblog.com), a post is created.