Twitter updater


UPDATE: Please head on over to the new home of my plugin: TWITTERUPDATER.COM this post here will not be updated any longer!!!

So, I found this cool plugin posting updates to twitter once you wrote a new blog post (or edited an old one). It’s pretty nice and can be found on the authors, Victoria Chan, site here (v1.1).

Jonathan Dingman then released an update adding tinyurl support (v2.0) which can be found here.

I just edited this v2.0 and replaced the tinyurl-support with support for the new url-shortening service ZZ.GD which results in even shorter short-urls saving more space in the tweet in case a post title is longer…

My new version (v2.07.1) can be found here (please read edits below for more information!!!): Twitter Updater v2.07.1

Known Issues:

  • None atm

Feature requests:

  • Possibility to include post’s category in tweet

Installation:
1. Download the plugin (see above link.)
2. Unzip the compressed file to your hard drive.
3. Upload the “twitter_updater” folder to your wp-content/plugins folder.
4. Browse to the Plugins page under wp-admin and activate the plugin.
5. Setting the options: Browse to Manage->Twitter Updater.
6. On this page, you can set any options you would like to.
7. IMPORTANT: Make sure you enter your Twitter username and password, then click on “save login”
8. That’s it! Now your Twitter.com status will be updated every time you publish a new post.

Edit (July 15th 2008): Just a quick note…the recent release of WP 2.6 has messed something up. While the plugin continues to work fine in WP version 2.5.1 and older, it keeps firing two updates (one with an invalid zz.gd-short-url) in WP 2.6. I’m going to investigate…stand by for news…and hopefully a quick fix.

Edit #2 (July 15th 2008): I’ve identified the culprit…WP2.6 uses post-revisions (saving multiple instances of the post using autosave)…hence the multi-tweet…working on a fix now…

Edit #3 (July 15th 2008): It’s indeed the post-revisions thing, but the quick workaround I tried (disabling post revisions after all) has had some major side-effects (namely edits of posts were not saved anymore)…so I really need to address this issue by checking the post status and ignoring revisions…fix probably coming tomorrow…for the time being please just manually delete the first auto-tweet.

Edit #4 (July 17th 2008): Sorry about the delay, but my computer fried itself today, so I had no time to fix it yet…exciting news forthcoming…as hopefully the fix…stay tuned.

Edit #5 (July 17th 2008): This little plugin has it’s own twitter source parameter now…so it’ll say “from Ingoal’s Twitter Update” instead of “from web” from now on…you can grab the latest version, version 2.02 above…version 2.03 with the bugfix (double-tweet) is still forthcoming…

Edit #6 (July 22nd 2008): Sorry about the delay…but I had something else going on, so it took me a while to write the fix. I deleted some of the options, from now on out you’ll have the update choice to auto-twitter when posting a new post (with or without link using zz.gd) and auto-twittering when editing old posts…that’s it. Compatible to WordPress version 2.6! So if you’re running WP 2.6, please update to version 2.03!!! …and if you’re running WP 2.5.1 or older, please continue to use version 2.02!!! Hat tip to microkid for his hint about identifying WordPress post revisions and auto-saves!!!

Edit #7 (July 27th 2008): Fixed the post-title issue. In the prior version post titles were truncated if they included an ampersand ( & )…this is fixed now…please update.

Edit #8 (July 29th 2008): Introduced alternative method to retrieve the shorturl from zz.gd (using curl)…please update if you had problems (error message, empty shorturl) and make sure you have a look at the twitter updater page (manage) -> check the new checkbox! If you didn’t have problems you don’t need to do anything…

Edit #9 (August 04th 2008): Introduced a cascading in the shorturl generation. After zz.gd was down the last two days due to server issues, ppl using the plugin were stuck with empty shorturls. To rectify that situation and keep it from happening in the future the cascade of zz.gd — tinyurl.com was introduced. If zz.gd is down, the shorturl will be generated using tinyurl.com. Other cascades might be added in the future, but for now, this one seems to be more than enough.

Edit #10 (October 18th 2008): So…Marco “Saphod” Luthe put up a modded version of the 2.06 version that fixes the future post (and save post) issues. I took the liberty to rename his modded version 2.06 to version 2.07 and I’m officially releasing it here. Thanks again Marco! All you users and readers out there feel free to drop by his site to thank him for the fix…and happy tweeting/twittering….

Edit #11 (November 1st 2008):Corrected tinyurl api url, so that if you’re using tinyurl instead of zz.gd you’re getting the correct short-url…

104 thoughts on “Twitter updater

  1. Thanks for fixing the double tweet! Haven’t tried it out yet but I’m sure it will work.

  2. First thanks for the twitter updater, I’ve updated the original version because of double tweeting, unfortunately I’m getting a major error here too and I’m not sure why. The url shows empty when tweeted: “()”

    Also I get 5 errors in wordpress immediately after publishing, 4 beginning with: file_get_contents() ….

    What can I do to solve this? Thanks :)

  3. Well, it seems that you’re encountering the same problem as Bruce did (see comments above), but as you said you downloaded the latest version that shouldn’t be a major problem…go to the manage screen, then the twitter update page and then enable the “alternative method to get shorturl” (right above save options; this will switch the method to get the shorturl to curl, which should work on 99% of the hosts) and you should be good to go…

    If you’ve got additional questions or any other problems or if this solved the problem, please feel free to comment here again :)

  4. Hi!

    I know that zz.gd is your site and you’d like to promote it with this plugin – but how can I change Twitter Updater to use tinyurl.com again? I tried by commenting out some code, but instead of a URL, I got the http headers as result for $tinyurl – which looked a bit weird…

    Thanks!

  5. Well…it’s quite easy to do, but as I don’t encourage it, I won’t post the solution here ;)

    Mail sent…check your inbox :)

  6. Hi Ingoal,
    I have updated my wordpress to 2.6.2 and Twitter Updater doesn’t work any more without showing any errors.
    Isn’t it compatible to wordpress 2.6.2?
    Did you check it now on 2.6.2 ?

    Thanks, Saeid

  7. Hi Saeid and thanks for the headsup about WordPress 2.6.2! I didn’t have the chance to test it with 2.6.2 yet…I’ll get on it this week and I’ll post a new version (if necessary)…watch this spot!

  8. Hi Ingo,
    you don’t need to update your plugin, it works fine with 2.6.2.
    I figured out that myspace plugin not worked and so it caused me too much headaches with other plugins witch couldn\’t work properly.
    Anyway problem solved and yors work fine for me now.

    Thanks a lot, Saeid

  9. Thanks Ingoal it works just fine now. @ Everyone else having the same problems as mentioned above, just make sure it really saves your settings, then you should be fine.

  10. Bug: if I schedule a post to be published tomorrow, for example, this plugin publishs a tweet about the new post now, not tomorrow.

    Please, correct this…

    []’s!

  11. Hi Rodrigo…yeah, it’s a known bug (list updated)…but I won’t be able to get around to fix it in the next few days (maybe even weeks)…too busy…but I will fix it eventually…

  12. @Rodrigo, @Ingoal:

    In twitter_updater.php on line 195, change

    add_action ( ‘save_post’, ‘vc_twit’);

    to

    add_action ( ‘publish_post’, ‘vc_twit’);

    and see if that helps.

    I think that save_post does not care about scheduling, whereas publish_post is only triggered when the post actually goes public.

    But I am not sure.
    Please try and tell me if it works.
    Thanks.

  13. I have updated to the latest Twitter Updater on 2 sites I support and it doesn’t work. It does not have any errors, it just does not publish to Twitter. Both are WP 2.6.2 and the older version (double) published, but this does not seem to work at all.

    Any clues?

  14. Pingback: Andreas Ebbert-Karroum » Blog Archive » Updated Twitter updater

  15. Sorry guys…a little busy these days, I’ll try to look into all the proposed solutions asap…

  16. Yeah, it’s a pity the current version v2.06 of twitter updater doesn’t work with scheduled posts. There are not being posted to twitter. Well, at least, they are not being posted at all instead of too early…

  17. Pingback: Fix for “Ingoal’s Twitter Updater” v2.06 | Marco Luthe Online!

  18. I think I have found a fix for the scheduled post problem. You can download the fixed version here. I will only make it available until Ingo updates his plugin. Feedback is welcome.

    @Ingo: please download the fix and see if you can use it to update your plugin. I still think there could be some more improvements on the code, especially when it comes to the post status transitions and the $_POST handling.

  19. Hi Marco,

    sorry…still thin on time…I’ll try to have a look asap, but I can’t promise anything…I’ll keep you posted about the integration…and yes there’s still numerous points where the code could be optimised…all in due time :-)

  20. Thanks for updating this plugin. I wish you were higher on the search engines so I would have found your site before Victoria’s. It would be nice if she updated her page with your link also!

    Question: Should it still say “Your email address registered at Twitter” in the manage panel, or should that say Twitter Username?

  21. Yeah, well, I think both will do (email or username), but I’m using the username, so I’m not 100% sure…I guess I will rename that in the next release (to Username)…

  22. To make tinyurl.com work, you need to search for

    $tinyurl = file_get_contents_curl(“http://tinyurl.com/create.php?url=”.$thispostlink);

    within the “twitter-updater.php” file and change it to

    $tinyurl = file_get_contents_curl(“http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=”.$thispostlink);

    wherever it appears.

  23. True that….or just use version 2.07.1 which has all those corrections done for you already ;)

  24. Feature suggestion:

    How about a parameter to include the first few words of the post as well as the Title, Twitterfeed-style?

    Kind regards

  25. The updater suddenly stopped!

    It displays the title of the new blog post buy no link… any ideas??

  26. I think I managed to edit your code to remove the tinyurl funtion.. I have no clue what I am doing, since I dont know how to edit or write php. If anyone could clean this up, that would be great. I just replaced the tinyurl function with the get id function.. horrible way of doing it, but it worked?

    http://iamkraze.com/twitterupdater.txt

  27. Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_is_post_revision() in twitter_updater.php on line 99

    I’m getting this error when I try to use this plugin…any ideas?

  28. Dave: well, nothing much I can say without some additional infos (e.g. when did it stop working? which version of the plugin are you using? which version of wordpress are you using? etc)

    Jennifer: Same goes for you, which version of the plugin with which version of wordpress?

    kraze: why would you want to remove the short url function in the first place?

  29. Hi there,

    Firstly, this is an awesome plugin! Just what I was looking for.

    I’m just wondering if there’s a way to prevent it from notifying twitter for particular posts? Sometimes I want to add something but not have it updated on twitter, so is there a way to do this at all?

    Thanks!

  30. As noted above…no further support here…please head on over to twitterupdater.com…that being said: I’ll put that one on the “feature request”-list…thanks for the suggestion!

  31. Hi, I tried to send feedback on twitter.com but glob and forum don’t seem to work properly.

    I also get the:

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_is_post_revision() in /home//wp-content/plugins/twitter_updater/twitter_updater.php on line 99

    I’m running latest version of WordPress MU.

  32. There’s no way to leave comments on twitterupdater.com, and the forums don’t work either.

  33. Please bear with me as twitterupdater.com is setup (especially the forums and other features)…rome wasn’t built in a day either ;) …and the fact that you can’t leave comments on the mainpage is not a bug, it’s a feature…work’s as design so to say… :)

  34. Hey,

    We’re having issues with zz.gd links not working today. We receive tens of thousands of pageviews per day via Twitter, so obviously it’s an urgent situation for us.

    If zz.gd links are not gonna be fixed immediately, could you please mail me the instructions on switching them to tinyurls for now? Thanks so much!

  35. Sorry for the hiccup Pete, while moving servers someone, read: me, transferred everything…BUT I forgot the .htaccess doing the rewrite-magic. The issue has been resolved yesterday morning. Thanks for your patience and your continued usage of the plugin!

    Btw…I’ll email you my mail-address now for future reference…

  36. Hi there

    First off, thank you for the fine plugin. Unfortunately it does not work anymore after upgrading to WP 2.7 Is there a update in sight :-)

    Thank you.

  37. Is there a way to update different twitter accounts for different authors within a blog?

    I have a multi contributor blog and it would be nice if they could link the posts they make to their twitter account.

    Thanks.

  38. Dustin: Currently that’s not possible, I’ll put it on the feature request list

    Nitai: Yup, we’re aware of it, as apparent on the status info on twitterupdater.com. Currently working on a fix, could be another few days though….

  39. I think something is wrong with http://zz.gd/ tonight. I got the following error after publishing:

    Warning: file_get_contents(http://zz.gd/api-create.php?url=http://www.juliesjournal.com/2009/01/01/hair-scarf-picture/) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/jules/public_html/wp-content/plugins/twitter_updater/twitter_updater.php on line 118

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/jules/public_html/wp-content/plugins/twitter_updater/twitter_updater.php:118) in /home/jules/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 770

    Although Twitter did update (so your plugin is working fine of course)

    Hair Scarf Picture @ TinyURL.com – shorten that …

  40. Hi Julie,

    yeah, there’s a slight problem with zz.gd since dec 31st…the hoster deactivated it due to spam-requests. The situation has been rectified, but the hoster still didn’t reenable the account yet. On another note: in case something like this happens, there’s an extra “security layer” – if zz.gd is down/unavailable, the plugin automatically uses tinyurl.com…so as you’re getting an error, I’m guessing you aren’t using the latest version (as this problem with tinyurl was corrected in the last version)… :-)

  41. I’m using the latest version and I’m getting my links listed as spam on twitter. How about a check box in the admin to choose which type of links you want to use. Or tell us how to change the links until the spam listed one gets fixed?

  42. You’re on the wrong trail here…it isn’t twitter that’s classifying your links as spam, it’s zz.gd.

    To verify this assumption you can go directly to zz.gd and put in the address of you post and create the links manually. It should give you an elaborate message about how your address was classified as spam.

    If that’s the case, feel free to contact the guys at zz.gd (e.g. me, check the contact page of zz.gd) with the link in question and maybe it can be sorted out (e.g. if your link was classified as spam in error)…

  43. Thank you for your response. I have a new issue now. I updated my WP to 2.7 and the plugin doesn’t seem to work. Any advice?

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