Turbocharged

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to seamlessly integrate WordPress/Turbocharged with Twitter.

There are two things you might want to do with your WordPress blog and Twitter:

1. You may want to display what you’ve been up to in the sidebar
2. You may want to inform your readership of new blog posts

Twitter enables both of them, through the Twitter Better WordPress plugin.

Sure, you could already do this using other technologies such as e-mail and RSS. But using Twitter for the job can be dramatically superior to alternatives like RSS feeds and mailing lists, because you get the advantage of push technology to mobile phones and instant messaging clients. And it’s instantaneus.

Getting the plugin

Before you use it, you need to download, install and activate it.

If you’re using the latest version of Turbocharged, you’re in luck because you can skip this step: Turbocharged already integrates Twitter Better for your twitting pleasure :-). In fact, we recommend you get Twitter Better this way — most Turbocharged editions let you have support and warranty.

Maintaining your readership informed of events in your blog

Twitter Better can update your (or your blog’s) status information every time you:

• start drafting a new article
• publish said article
• modify an article on your blog

To do so:

• open up your WordPress/Turbocharged management console
• go to Options -> Twitter Better
• fill up the user authentication form
• customize how Twitter Better will act

I sincerely suggest you create a separate Twitter account for your blog, because (understandably) not all of your readers will want to know your personal whereabouts.

That’s it. Once you’ve done this, Twitter Better will start posting information about your blog on Twitter.

Encouraging Twitters to follow your blog

Believe it or not, this is the easiest part, and a nice enhancement to sport on your sidebar. Just:

1. go to your (or your blog’s) Twitter profile
2. view the source of that page, and look for a line like this: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Your blog (RSS)" href="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/774269.rss" />. Note the number besides the .rss text — this is the account number.
3. add a new text widget to your sidebar.
4. in the text box for the widget, place something like: <a href="http://twitter.com/friendhips/create/774269">Follow the updates on this blog.</a>. Change the number to your (or your blog’s) own account number.

Save and see the results. Now, when Twitters click on that link, they’ll automatically start following you (or your blog).

Displaying what you (or your friends, or your blog) have been up to

If your blog theme has sidebar widgets support, you can display a sidebar widget with your Twitter updates. Try this:

1. ensure your sidebar widgets plugin is enabled
2. open up your WordPress/Turbocharged management console
3. go to Presentation -> Sidebar widgets
4. drag one of the Twitter Better widgets from the bottom widget palette into one of your sidebars
5. click the option button in the widget, and type your user name; then customize the other options to your taste

For this to work, your Twitter user must be configured as publicly viewable on Twitter.

Be forewarned: Twitter’s service fails from time to time. This means that your activity may not be displayed all the time. We’re working on a caching solution so this won’t be a problem in the course of a few days from now.

That’s it

Twitter is a powerful service, and one surely to be sold to the big boys for big bucks. Now, with WordPress, you can exploit the service to your and your readers’ advantage.

And with Turbocharged, you get this and a hundred plugins more, with support and warranty. Get your copy today!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Turbocharged and WordPress tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.