I’ve got a new version of Twitter Tools ready (I think) for testing. This version adds a number of often requested features and other enhancements:
- Show a link to the tweet being replied to for @replies.
- Option to exclude @replies from the sidebar tweets list.
- Make all @usernames clickable.
- Check that the tweets downloaded are indeed the user’s tweets - sometimes Twitter has hiccups.
- Don’t broadcast edits to old posts. Note: Twitter Tools always included code to only broadcast a post once. However edits to posts created before Twitter Tools was installed would be sent to Twitter because there is no “only when a post is first published” hook (that I’m aware of) in WordPress. Now a timestamp is saved upon installation to try to work around this.
- Ability to send blog posts to Twitter on a per-post basis (checkbox added to post authoring screen).
- Option to use jQuery instead of Prototype - useful if you like to tweet from your sidebar. The jQuery library is a smaller download than Prototype.
- Added post author setting.
- Added post tags setting.
- Added an option to make digest posts display tweets in either chronological or reverse-chronological order.
- Make URLs clickable in blog posts created from tweets and digest posts.
Note: after you install this version of Twitter Tools, you’ll need to go in and update your settings to take advantage of these new features - until you do, things will not work properly.
As you can see, there are many changes in this version, so I’m releasing this as a beta instead of a stable version. I’ve done about 5-6 hours of testing on it and I’m using it here, so I obviously think it’s probably safe for production, but it has not been widely tested… if I had to bet, I’d say there are still a few things still to be discovered. You’ve been warned. 
The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
If you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
Popularity: 26% [?]
Luke adds this Comment:
Hey Alex, thanks for this, just wondering how difficult it would be to have weekly digest posts as well daily ones? cheers, Luke.
April 13th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
It’s some work, and a lot of testing. If someone wants to submit a patch, I’ll try to review and test it for inclusion.
April 13th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Kieran Bennett adds this Comment:
Wow, thanks again for all your wonderful work. I’ll be upgrading immediately!
April 13th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Jens adds this Comment:
Is it possible (perhaps as a suggestion for a new version) that only tweets with a special #hashtag will be posted to the blog?
April 13th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Wordpress Twitter Tools 1.2b1 veröffentlicht | marcO's_br4inh4ck adds this Pingback:
[…] Tweetz dazu sind ja sicher dem ein oder anderen bekannt. Die Integration hier erfolgt ueber das Twitter Tools Plugin von Alex King. Alex hat nach langer Zeit mal ein Update mit ein paar nuetzlichen Funktionen […]
April 13th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Owen Cutajar adds this Comment:
Thanks for the update. It’s always nice to have some new features to play with
Owen (TwitterTools fan)
April 14th, 2008 at 1:50 am
(a different) Alex adds this Comment:
Nicely done, I found the twittering when editing old posts a bit annoying, great work on the updates. Updating now. :]
April 14th, 2008 at 2:21 am
(a different) Alex adds this Comment:
Hmm, getting a “Login failed, double-check that username and password.” message with the correct details. Time for some tinkering on my end.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:28 am
Johan adds this Comment:
Hi Alex. Good for you. Thanks. I saw the update on twitter and though to investigate. Thanks for taking out prototype.js. Will check how this speed up my blog and come and tell you if you want.
Looking forward to use all the new features. As Luke has said: Will wait for the weekly digest.
Have fun.
Johan
P.S. Proud to see a fellow South African won the masters
April 14th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Chris Lott adds this Comment:
ah, for a minute there I thought this had the one thing I really need, which is to exclude @directed posts from the daily digest! But I am excited about the other changes, so I will add that one in and hope it comes in the future.
Also, making use of the ability to customize the prefix for Twitter announcements would be great.
Thanks for the great plugin!
April 14th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Alex Rodriguez adds this Comment:
Love this plugin. I have two comments/questions.
-The autoupdate feature of WP 2.5 has not seen the new version.
-I would like an option that would create a full URL not a tinyurl.
Thanks again for the work on this.
Alex
April 14th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Alex adds this Comment:
Twitter Tools does not use any URL shortening service at this time.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Johan adds this Comment:
Hi Alex this new twitter tools plugin only increased the load speed of my blog by 1 second. And it’s nothing compared to the previous that used prototype.js. Well done! Johan
April 14th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Joel adds this Comment:
Great tool. I love it, except I have one question:
The Custom field which (i’m guessing) specifies whether or not to post to Twitter… Do I need to disable my meta Template Tag to get that not to show up? It’s not a huge issue, I was just using it for simple meta data displaying in blog posts and now I get:
aktt_notify_twitter: no
I may just disable the display of these tag anyway. Thanks for the best twittering tool out there.
April 14th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
eduo adds this Comment:
Funny. I must be the only one that liked the “tweet on updates to posts”.
Is this an option now? I’d really enjoy a message for new posts and a message for edited posts (and a customizable message, at that).
A way to do this might be setting a threshold for sending an update. If the “publish” date of the post is less than 5 minutes away from the current timestamp then it’s tweeted as new, if it’s older than a day then it’s tweeted as an update (with the second value a config value for the plugin).
April 15th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Alex adds this Comment:
You are always free to modify the source code to make it do whatever you like.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:12 am
eduo adds this Comment:
I know, I just thought I’d share seeing as “tweet entries” is more of an issue than I thought. I’m not being ungrateful or anything (didn’t mean to sound like it either)
April 15th, 2008 at 7:24 am
بلاگ نوشت » ابزارهای توئیتر برای وردپرس adds this Pingback:
[…] اما این افزونه کاری است از AlexKing که از اینجا قابل دانلود […]
April 15th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Chris adds this Comment:
Awww crap. I just finished hacking together my own mods to the old twitter tools that approximated many of these features. Could have saved my self some time if I knew you were working on it. *grin* Thanks for the great plugin.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
BabyGotMac adds this Comment:
Working like a charm here also Alex. Nice work sir.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Dean adds this Comment:
Hi Alex,
I was wondering if there was an easy way (presumably with a CSS class) to format tweets differently than regular WP posts? For instance:
======
Blog Title
WP Post - format A
Tweet - format B
WP Post - format A
Tweet - format B
Tweet - format B
======
I really want to make my tweets look significantly different (lighter in appearance) than my WP blog posts. That way, readers could easily see my tweets and say, “Oh, OK, these aren’t full blog posts because they’re in format B”. I hope that makes sense.
Thanks!
April 15th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Twitter Tools 1.2b1 adds this Pingback:
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April 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Dean - sure, that is just basic functionality built in to WP.
1. Set your tweets to use a category nothing else uses
2. Change your theme to output whatever HTML you need for styling based on this category and create CSS as desired to match it
3. There is no step 3
April 16th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Paul Arterburn adds this Comment:
I might look into the weekly digest option…it’s really what I’m looking for.
I’d also be curious your thoughts on creating a daily/weekly digest for other services - in particular a FriendFeed digest.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Joel G Goodman » Plugin: Twitter Tools adds this Pingback:
[…] Twitter Tools Follow me on […]
April 17th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
termansen.info - nu med junior | En ny uge truer adds this Pingback:
[…] at skulle gå ind på andre sider for at opdatere sådan nogle ting. Alex King har nemlig lavet Twitter Tool til WordPress - hvilket absolut gør det en del nemmere at opdatere sin Twitter. Det kan derfor […]
April 21st, 2008 at 1:30 am
My Twitterific Experience and Tools with Twitter | Tech At Hand dot Net | Philippine, Blogging, SEO & Tips adds this Pingback:
[…] your Twitter Updates for the day to your blog, It can be done by installing plug-ins from Alex. I saw Maki using this kind of plug-ins. And if you don’t want to share it to your normal […]
May 6th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Randall Paul Jenkins, Esq. » Blog Archive » Twitter Has Taken Over My Blog. adds this Pingback:
[…] I have noticed now that I Twitter, and now that I added Twitter Tools to my blog, my daily digest posts of my daily Tweets are taking over my blog. It’s kind of […]
May 7th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Twitter und das Publizieren von Belanglosigkeiten adds this Pingback:
[…] Um meine Follower auf ein Blogposting hinzuweisen, benutze ich Alex King’s Twitter Tools, ansonsten habe ich diverse Twitter-Clients ausprobiert, bin aber inzwischen wieder zum Twittern […]
May 12th, 2008 at 10:22 am