MT-Twitter: A Movable Type Plugin

Update: 2012-10-23 - I have decided to no longer develop this plugin. Sorry.

Why? Twitter changed their APIs recently. The new APIs no longer allow a non-authenticated user to get the list of tweets. This is how this plugin worked. Instead, you have to be authenticated via OAuth. In order to do that, I would have to embed my own Twitter dev keys into the plugin, which is a text file, for the world to see. Not a good idea. The other option is to have you, the user, get your own dev keys. I am not prepared to deal with the support required.

So I am leaving this plugin behind for now...

Current version is 4.1.0.1 released on 2010-05-11

Contents

What This Plugin Does

Heard of Twitter? Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website or 3rd party applications. But you probably already knew that or you wouldn't be reading this.

While I think Twitter is fun, I don't like spreading my posts all over the place. You might be posting on your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, on MySpace, etc. I want all my content to ultimately be on my blog but I don't mind it being in other places too.

So I decided to do a 1-way sync with Twitter to Movable Type. That way I can use Twitter when I want to, but my Movable Type blog will be updated with all the content in the background.

Using the background tasks functionality in Movable Type, this plugin will query your Twitter account for your latest updates, or "tweets". When it sees a new one, it will create an entry in your blog for that tweet. Various properties of the blog entry are used. The title isn't really interesting because tweets don't have titles. The body of the entry is the text of the tweet. A direct URL to the tweet on Twitter.com is put into the extended entry field. In the end, you have tweets appearing on your blog so your non-Twitter friends can see what you are up to just by reading your blog.

I could have used a separate database for the tweets, but I decided it was cooler and more integrated to use normal blog entries. Then you can use a variety of Movable Type template tweaks to show/hide the tweets or customize their display.

Requirements

  • Movable Type version 4 and higher.
  • Perl version 5.8.8 or higher.

Installation Instructions

  1. Download the latest version of the plugin.
  2. Unzip the contents of the file.
  3. Copy the file Twitter.pl to your Movable Type "plugins" directory. (If you don't have a plugins directory, create a plugins directory in the same directory where your mt.cgi file is located. Then upload Twitter.pl into the newly created plugins directory.)
  4. Go into your blog settings. Click on the Plugins tab. You should see an entry for MT-Twitter. Click on Show Settings and configure as desired.
  5. If you have any trouble, be sure to check the Movable Type Activity Log for errors.

Configuration

There are a variety of options that you can set when configuring the plugin:

Configuration

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Q: I set everything up but its not publishing. What am I missing?
    A: Be sure that you have Movable Type's background tasks setup with the script run-periodic-tasks. This is shipped with Movable Type in the tools directory.

Examples

1. To customize the display of tweets in your templates, you can use a category filter. The label parameter should be set to the name of the category you posted your tweets under. Tweets is the default category name.


<MTEntries lastn="15">

   <MTIfCategory label="Tweets">

      <p>I am a tweet!</p>

   <MTElse>

      <p>I am NOT a tweet!</p>

   </MTElse>

   </MTIfCategory>

</MTEntries>

Purchase

The cost for this plugin is $10 USD.

License

This software is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. This software is licensed, not sold.

NO WARRANTY. THE PRODUCT IS DISTRIBUTED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AS TO MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. THE AUTHOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR DATA LOSS, DAMAGES, LOSS OF PROFITS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF LOSS WHILE USING OR MISUSING THIS SOFTWARE.

Download

Download the current version after purchase from the link below. Past versions are not archived.

Version History

4.1.0.1 -- 2010-05-11
  • Fixed issue with links to Twitter users where colon was appearing after name.
4.1.0.0 -- 2010-03-13
  • Added ability to customize the title of the tweet.
  • Added the ability to convert user references and hashtags to links.
  • Changed the converted links to show the link title instead of the word Link.
  • Added the ability to publish tweets as drafts. Nice for troubleshooting and previewing.
  • Added ability to run the plugin's task code from the configuration screen.
  • Additional debug logs for troubleshooting.
4.0.0.1 -- 2009-11-24
  • Updated plugin settings to use fancier MT user interface.
  • Fixed issue where Convert URLs option assumed incorrect URL end.
  • I cleared out the comments on this plugin because many no longer applied.
4.0.0.0 -- 2007-08-17
  • Updated some registration techniques in the plugin to make it work with MT4.
  • Added abliity to exclude tweets based on regular expression.
  • Changed major version to 4 to indicate MT4 requirement.
1.0.1.0 -- 2007-08-13
  • Added a configuration option for the publishing of replies (@username).
1.0.0.0 -- 2007-04-09
  • Works for me.

Contact

For questions, suggestions, bug reports, and anything else related to this plugin, please e-mail brandon@fuller.name or leave a comment.

Updated: 2012-10-23 at 18:28 MDT in Hacks
Tags: movabletype twitter
Related Posts with Thumbnails