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New Twitter Plugin for BuddyPress


  • Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    We’re just about finished creating a new Twitter plugin designed especially for Buddypress. Here’s a list of features – and we’ll update this thread with a URL for more info when we release the plugin in the next couple of days:

    – Adds a new Settings page for people to configure their Twitter ID and psw.

    – Adds options to selectively tweet posts (in the Add New post screen for blogs – if the blogs component is enabled in BP )

    – Adds a screen where logged-in users can send tweets from within BP if they’ve configured their Twitter login details.

    – Adds all new tweets sent from within BP to the Activity page (but not for tweeted posts since new posts already show up there)

    – Integrates a Twitter menu item in the user’s public nav bar if they’ve configured their Twitter ID and psw. This allows the public to view the user’s last 20 tweets. It also shows the number of “followers” and “following” for the user, plus the total tweet count.

    – Integrates a Twitter Trends pages that shows the most popular search phrases at Twitter over a 7 day time span. There is also an option to display today’s trends at the bottom of a user’s list of tweets.

    – Adds a multi-instance widget to the blogs (if the blogs module is enabled in BP) to display tweets in the sidebar. Because this is a multi-instance widget it can be used for blogs that have more than one author or for users who have more than one Twitter account – e.g. each widget instance can be configured with a unique Twitter account.

    – It’s performance friendly. After getting the user’s tweets from Twitter the data is stored for one hour before being refreshed – unless a user posts a tweet from within BP or tweets a blog post – in those cases the cache refreshes. The same holds true for the trends data – except trends data is site-wide, meaning it is only downloaded once per hour regardless of how many users have Twitter configured in their account.

    – The caching mechanism works with WP Cache (or other cache tools that integrate WP Cache – such as WP Super Cache and derivatives) and if there’s no caching enabled then it will use the database to cache data.

    So that’s it at the moment. Any wish list items before we wrap this up?

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 58 total)

  • 2698149
    Inactive

    Sounds good, I say release it.. If you are going to add it, make a new release.. I am looking forward to testing this! Can’t wait..


    hyrxx
    Participant

    @hyrxx

    sounds good, i think you should release it too, im interested in trying it out


    Roy McKenzie
    Participant

    @roymckenzie

    This sounds GREATTTT!!!!!


    Kunal17
    Participant

    @kunal17

    Awesome!

    1 thing I have been looking for is a plugin that displays twitter search results well. If you see my buddypress install at http://theindianstartup.com the right column has a twitter search RSS feed, which gives the right results but looks very crappy. This is because, each tweet is pulled in like a link instead of text. I have been trying to figure out a solution to this but I dont code well.

    I am sure a lot of buddypress websites might want to pull in twitter search feeds concerning their niche areas and the ability for the widget to pull in twitter search results and display them as text (with hyperlinks for the actual links ofcourse) would be really awesome.


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    That’s great . Can you tweet from wire to twitter

    Need to reply to followers

    Need to group followers

    add tinyurl

    add twitpic api

    add facebook api


    cdouglasconlan
    Participant

    @cdouglasconlan

    this looks sweet! Looking forward to it!


    Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    @Gpo1: Not sure what you mean by all of that except your question about tweeting. Can you elaborate please?

    Right now there is a separate page for sending new tweets. But we might integrate an option into the Wire screen. We’ll check into it before releasing.

    As for Facebook, we might be able to add that via a different plugin since it doesn’t exactly pertain to Twitter.

    @Kunal17: Search sounds cool. We could add a widget for that. Twitter search API is diverse, so we’ll have to figure out how to handle that without making a widget config overly confusing for plugin users.

    We added a new feature to the plugin today: Rate limit detection. What – you didn’t know Twitter only allows X number of data downloads per hour? Ya, they do. So we’ve added code to help ensure that limit isn’t exceed (it should only happen in rare circumstances) and if it is then a friendly message shows up to let readers know that the tweet and trend content might be not entirely fresh at the moment.

    Details: Twitter limits API calls to 100 per hour per user, or 100 per hour per IP address if you’re not authenticating whiile making an API call. So basically, those limits would only be exceeded if some BP user had plugins all over the planet each downloading their tweets or they were using a badly designed twitter plugin somewhere else (unlikely, but it could happen). Or, it could happen if a site is on a shared hosting account and lots of other sites on the same server are making Twitter API calls for trend or search data – again, unlikely, but it could happen.

    So we try to handle those cases gracefully via code. And, so far I’ve not seen any other Twitter plugins for WP or WPMU that deal with those possibilities.

    We try to be thorough (perfection is impossible ;-)


    Kunal17
    Participant

    @kunal17

    M, the plugin is sounding great. Please let us know as soon as you have something for release. Do you have an ETA for an initial release?

    Would it be easier to start with if the plugin just handled RSS feeds from twitter search instead of taking the search parameters from withing the plugin itself? Maybe 2 different plugins that integrate well will make things accessible to both basic and advanced users.


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    This plugin does it have the same function like twitter like tweet your followers replies & group followers etc?


    Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    @Gpo1: Whatever you can do with the tweet form at Twitter, you can do with the tweet form in this plugin.

    @Kunal17: It’ll be ready soon as we get the search widget created. Possibly this weekend. And no, we won’t use RSS for that. We’ll make it happen via the API because that is more flexible.


    Scotm
    Participant

    @scotm

    Without knowing the details, it would be nice if you could somehow ‘pull’ the post form into a custom home theme in BP. This way users could seamlessly cross-post to Twitter from the home page using one form. I’m using P2 theme as my home theme so the need is obvious, but perhaps this could be possible somehow.

    Regardless, very happy to hear this is coming soon.


    2878458
    Inactive

    I’m excited about this, its almost exactly what i was looking for…

    I would however really like to see tweet by wire integration (perhaps a small check box that says tweet this)


    belogical
    Participant

    @belogical

    sounds awesome! will this be integrated into the buddpress status updates that will be incorporated soon?


    nicolagreco
    Participant

    @nicolagreco

    i like the caching mechanism inclusion, better will be if it will be cached with the built in system wp_cache_set & family


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    @Scotm, Am interested in that also integrating P2 theme with this twitter plugin.

    & tweet from wire!


    Jhuskisson
    Participant

    @jhuskisson

    Sounds really good, can’t wait to see it :)


    Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    Tweet from Wire added today. Working on search for a sidebar widget now. Then we’ll have a look at P2 integration needs.


    Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    Tweet search widget for blog sidebars is complete. On to P2 integration possibilities….


    Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    @Scotm : You’re using P2 as your home theme – is there way for users to get to their Settings page (as seen in the default BP theme) ? I ask because in order to tweet to Twitter a username and password is required, so a user has to configure that somewhere first.

    With this plugin, it adds a new item to the Settings menu so that users can config their username and password. So if you’re somehow integrating the Settings menu into your site and users can access it to configure their Twitter login info then I can add a template tag that can be used in P2 so that you can easily add the required HTML elements to your P2 post form to cause a ‘tweet to twitter’ feature to work pretty easily.

    So in short it’d work like this: You include the template tag in your post form template code and that tag will insert a checkbox that says something like “Also tweet this to Twitter”. If the user checks the box when making a post then a tweet will be sent to Twitter. And if they don’t have their Twitter login info configured then the checkbox won’t even appear in the form. Instead there would be a short message like “You can tweet this to Twitter if you configure your Twitter user name and password in your profile settings”


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    @M , you are good…. Can you create a page for followers avatar with tweets updates etc?


    Scotm
    Participant

    @scotm

    @M Sorry, I don;t have this configured, but you’ve pretty much hit on the head what I’ve been trying to do since integrating P2 with Buddypress. The best example I can find of how it might work is by somehow modding the Commentwitter plugin for use in the P2 postform versus its intended use with the WordPress comment form.

    This plugin enables an ajax input form to appear below the comment form where users can add their Twitter settings if they wish to cross-post. I’ve tried to mod this for the P2 post form unsuccessfully to date but it might offer some insight.

    Looking forward to helping any way I can if only testing.

    Thx


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    @Scotm, Have you got P2 theme as a member theme ,it would look good or home page?


    belogical
    Participant

    @belogical

    @M

    What does the release date look like now?


    Scotm
    Participant

    @scotm

    @Gpo1

    I have a modified member page working with my P2 theme. See:

    http://blogpei.com/members/admin/


    Mark
    Participant

    @wpsec

    @Scotm – what’s the URL for your site so I can take a look

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 58 total)
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