I’m very pleased to announce that Twitter Tools 2.0 is now available!
Twitter Tools is a WordPress plugin that creates a complete, two-way integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Version 2.0 of Twitter Tools makes the plugin extensible in the same way WordPress itself is. I’ve added hooks and filters that allow other plugins to be created for Twitter Tools and extend/change/customize the way Twitter Tools works.
I get a lot of requests for features/changes that are specific to someone’s particular needs. Unfortunately I can’t build specific features for each user into the general plugin, but now other people can build plugins for it to make things work just as they want it to.
To make sure these hooks and filters work properly, I created three plugins for Twitter Tools that provide commonly requested features:
- Bit.ly for Twitter Tools – enables shortening your URLs with Bit.ly and tracking them on your Bit.ly account.
- #hashtags for Twitter Tools – enables adding hashtags to your blog post tweets.
- Exclude Category for Twitter Tools – enables not tweeting posts in chosen categories.
Each of these plugins can to be activated individually from your Plugins page, and adds their configuration options to the Twitter Tools settings page. These should be great examples for anyone wanting to build a plugin for Twitter Tools.
Here are some ideas for other Twitter Tools plugins that I’ve seen requests for:
- Add tracking tokens to the end of blog post URLs that are sent to Twitter – this is all customizable with filters now, so it should be pretty easy.
- Support for yfrog, twitpic, etc. in the Twitter widget display – you can customize the output of the tweet to include an image if you find one present.
- Add hashtags to your blog post tweet using the WordPress tags associated with the post.
- Make links in Tweets open in a new window/tab.
- Only Tweet blog posts in a certain category.
- Ability to customize/add text to the blog post Tweet.
- Use http://example.com?p=123 style URLs for blog post permalinks.
- Changing how much of the tweet text is used for the post title (or changing it to something else entirely).
- Etc.
Hopefully we’ll see lots of interesting Twitter Tools plugins from folks who have been requesting these features. I’m very interested to see what people build.
I’ve also added some additional CSS classes to the tweet output and a commonly requested feature to customize the tweet prefix for new blog post notifications. I had resisted this in the past due to some edge cases that could cause problems, but I believe only a rare situation (annoyance, not fatal) is possible and I doubt folks will run into it – sounds like famous last words, right? 
The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
If you have any trouble with this, please contact the WordPress HelpCenter (512-788-9236) or you can try the WP Support Forums.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Andrew Thompson adds this Comment:
Great, thank you for the update, some good new features.
I had previously coded a modification that looks at the tweet source (Twitter Tools) to allow for detecting if it was a blog tweet. That allowed me to change the whole format of the tweet, e.g. Blog: %s %s, or %s %s (Blog)
Have you had any thoughts on doing it that way.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Alex adds this Comment:
Yes, that method doesn’t account for ad-hoc tweets sent from the admin interface.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
Alex Barger adds this Comment:
I have added a shortcode function to this at the end of the twitter-tools.php file so that I can just have the tweets on a dedicated page rather then in the sidebar.
Thanks fellow Alex.
//
if(function_exists(‘add_shortcode’)){
function aktt_shortcode($args) {
extract($args);
$options = get_option(‘aktt_widget’);
$title = $options['title'];
if (empty($title)) {
}
return aktt_sidebar_tweets();
}
add_shortcode(‘twittertools’, ‘aktt_shortcode’);
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
Sue Bailey adds this Comment:
You put the ?p=xx links in. Woo!
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
Andrew Thompson adds this Comment:
Yes, it wouldn’t account for ad-hoc tweets, but I assume the response sent from adding a tweet includes its id, you could insert it into the database ready for the refresh.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:53 am
Alex adds this Comment:
With the new hooks in version 2.0, I think you can likely try that out.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
Lindskog adds this Comment:
Thank You Alex!
One quick question though; where do I set the bit.ly tracking?
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Chris Hill-Scott adds this Comment:
If anyone’s thinking of implementing this plugin: “Add hashtags to your blog post tweet using the WordPress tags associated with the post.” then it would be really good to have categories as an option as well as tags. The plugin architecture is a great idea in general, thanks.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
John Girvin adds this Comment:
Thanks for updating this very useful plugin with some much desired new features. I especially like the new custom prefix and hashtag support, which I’d hacked in to the previous release myself.
You may be interested to know I’ve modified the supplied bit.ly plugin to use tr.im instead, since that’s where I keep my own URLs. You can download the modified plugin here: http://www.johngirvi[...]ols-2-0.html
August 3rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
shabooty adds this Comment:
woot thanks updated!
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Isaac | Go Blogger (dot) net adds this Comment:
Interesting features. I’ll try this plugin.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Erick adds this Comment:
I’d like a Snipurl shortener with this. Could you guide me how I can take the bit-ly support and add snipurl support instead? I mean which lines in the code should I be looking at? Thanks for this awesome effort!
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Johnny adds this Comment:
hi, twitter is GFWed in China,so i want to change API to round the GFW,is it feasible scheme？
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Joachim adds this Comment:
Alex,
I love this plugin!!
thanks
Joachim
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Avi Marcus adds this Comment:
Plugins are a great idea!
Is there some central forum or repository for the plugins people will come up with?
And 2 requests for plugins:
-Integration with twitturly or tweetmeme for tracking retweet counts
-Pull comments on twitter into WP comments (or just let me know one that doesn’t conflict with this, and properly identifies them)
August 4th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Jaydip Parikh adds this Comment:
This plugin is wonderful. This helps lot to Wordpress Bloggers.
August 4th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Dampfmaschine » Blog Archive » Twitter-Tools 2.0 für Identica adds this Pingback:
[...] hat mich Wordpress darauf hingewiesen, dass die Version 2.0 des Plugins erschienen ist. Neu in der Version sind unter Anderem die Unterstützung von bit.ly als URL-Shortener, das [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Twitter Tools pro WordPress v češtině | Bzovský kurýr adds this Pingback:
[...] všechny služby do co nejmenšího množství nástrojů mě přivedla k výtečnému nástroji Twitter Tools pro WordPress, který umožňuje plně integrovat váš účet Twitter do vašich stránek používajích [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Steffen adds this Comment:
Expand short urls would be great! (Create a blog post from each of your tweets)
http://longurl.org/api
August 4th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Line Items for 2009-08-03 | K-Squared Ramblings adds this Pingback:
[...] nice improvements in Twitter Tools 2.0 for WordPress (via @alexkingorg) [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 10:15 am
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August 4th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
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August 5th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Tarique Sani adds this Comment:
Hey Alex – a bug perhaps (hope this is the right place to report them) When I try to delete one of the child plugins from the plugins page WP wants to delete all the files which are there in the twitter-tools folder.
Similarly child plugin written by me was shown as having an upgrade available because in the file header I had the version as 1.0
I think this is an issue with WP rather than your plugin but insights into how this could be prevented would be appreciated
August 6th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Massgsm adds this Comment:
Something to create longer URL/URI would be fantastic. to make blog posts with your tweets
August 7th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Quick Thoughts: Weekly Twitter for 2009-08-09 « Speed Force adds this Pingback:
[...] I can definitely use the hashtags plugin! RT @alexkingorg: Twitter Tools 2.0 is now available. [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
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August 9th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
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August 11th, 2009 at 1:00 am
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August 11th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Michael adds this Comment:
Think there is a problem with headspace2. I tried without headspace2 and it works – I like it very much!
August 15th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Michael adds this Comment:
Ah sorry, I dont know why, but it es “Enforce www. Preference” which makes Twitter Tools crashing
August 16th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Matt Longman adds this Comment:
This is a brilliant plugin, I love the daily/weekly digest idea. Thanks!!
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
New People's Almanac adds this Comment:
Great job! Works flawlessly. Thanks for this contribution.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Paul adds this Comment:
twitter tools to convert @replies to comments would be awesome…
August 27th, 2009 at 6:11 am
John Girvin adds this Comment:
I’ve added a plugin for the YOURLS open source URL shortening service, so you can host your own short URLs and have them integrated with Twitter Tools.
http://www.johngirvi[...]ols-2-0.html
August 27th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
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[...] to thoroughly integrate your blog and your Twitter account. Depending on your preferences, Twitter Tools [...]
August 31st, 2009 at 4:15 am
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[...] when you add the power of other WP plugins like All-In-One SEO and Twitter Tools and some of the other more powerful plugins, you’re blog is going to skyrocket and [...]
August 31st, 2009 at 9:14 am
Bob Bergey adds this Comment:
I’d love for this plugin to post to Facebook at the same time as Twitter. I was sure I saw directions somewhere on how to do that, but now I can’t find them. Anyone point me in the right direction?
August 31st, 2009 at 9:51 am
Alan Levine adds this Comment:
Long time user! I’d like to see a more flexible approach for hash tags- I have little reason to use the same one every time. What it TwitterTools would look at the WordPress tags for a post, and add hashtags to the outgoing tweet only if there was a hashtag in the WP tags? e,g,, if I tagged my post:
dog, hate cats, #burybones, sleep
Twitter tools would just add the #burybones tag to the tweet for that post.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
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September 5th, 2009 at 9:28 am
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[...] habe ich mich für das Wordpress Plugin Twitter Tools 2.0 entschieden, da man hier mit den entsprechenden Einstellungen automatisch (also ohne das man immer [...]
September 6th, 2009 at 4:54 am
kleiner Test « kikamagazin bloggt adds this Pingback:
[...] erledigt Plugin für Twitter Tools läuft. Jetzt wird also tatsächlich immer ein kleiner Link hinter allen über twitter [...]
September 12th, 2009 at 4:33 am
tjk adds this Comment:
Hello and thanks for the plugin!
I was wondering if there is a way of changing the way the plugin handles the tweets imported from twitter. When the tweet is imported in WP it now gives the post a name containing several first characters from the tweet text… like “today was a gre…”.
there now is a prefix for tweets created in WP but not for ones created in Twitter. Can this be added?
Thanks!
October 21st, 2009 at 3:23 am
Alex adds this Comment:
You can create a filter to do this if you like.
October 21st, 2009 at 5:58 am
Angelo adds this Comment:
Ah… never mind me asking. Just found out that the problem was a trailing space in my bit.ly key. Keep up the good work, Alex!
October 26th, 2009 at 9:31 am
tjk adds this Comment:
Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately I am not capable of creating such a filter… I would not ask otherwise.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
The WordPress HelpCenter can probably assist you with this: help@wphelpcenter.com or call (512) 788-9236
October 29th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Halim adds this Comment:
Hi, do you have any plans of an upgrade of twitter tools to function with Wordpress 2.9(.1) ?
Also – are there any plans to add multi-widget support, similar to the functionality of Twitter Widget Pro, where you can have per-widget settings such as number of tweets ? Would make the toolkit complete.
January 8th, 2010 at 11:29 am
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