Tweet This, a WordPress Plugin for Twitter

Click here to download Tweet This v1.3.9

A plugin that adds a Twitter link to every post and page, so your readers can share your blog entries on their Twitter accounts with ease. Shortens URLs in advance. Tested on WordPress 2.7.1, 2.0.11, and 1.5.

2009-07-14 Announcement: please try this plugin again if you’ve had issues with it. Th8.us has had a lot of trouble with resource usage lately, but I’ve fixed that by removing all hit counters and URL lists (resource hogs). For you privacy advocates, Tweet This no longer phones home (the current version still pings my server but the data is ignored). This will also help to speed the plugin up.

The Long Description

Adds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page. Shortens URLs in advance through Th8.us, eating up only 19 of 140 characters. Also included: Plurk, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Ping.fm, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Includes the post’s title after the link (can be customized). If your titles are really long, they get cut off at 136 characters with “…”. Customize under Settings > Tweet This. Includes your choice of six buttons.

NOTE: To upgrade from v1.0 - v1.2.3 to v1.3 - v1.3.9, deactivate Tweet This, delete the tweet-this folder, upload the new tweet-this folder, and reactivate Tweet This.

Normally, posting a link to Twitter takes up a lot of space. Though they shorten URLs with TinyURL, it doesn’t happen till after you post your tweet, so the length of the original URL takes away from your 140 characters.

While your readers might go to TinyURL.com, copy and paste the blog post’s permalink, shorten the URL, copy that new URL, go to Twitter, and paste it into the box, this plugin merges all that into one step, using the Twitter API and Th8.us, an external URL trimming service I created. I didn’t like how long TinyURL’s URLs are, so I made Th8.us. Its URLs are 19 characters instead of TinyURL’s 25, giving you more space to write about the blog post.

This plugin fetches a shortened URL from Th8.us for each of your blog posts’ permalinks server-side, then displays a link to Twitter for each post, with a small Twitter logo. This is done automatically for each post as needed, but the shortened URLs are cached (as a custom field in the postmeta table) to keep load times fast. The cached records are updated or deleted as needed when you edit a post’s permalink, delete a post, change your site’s permalink structure, or change URL services.

You can pick Adjix.com, bit.ly, h3o.de, hex.io, idek.net, is.gd, Lin.cr, Metamark.net, ri.ms, Snurl.com, Th8.us, TinyURL.com, Tweetburner.com, urlb.at, or Zi.ma as your short URL service. Or, you can use local URLs, like http://yourblog.com/?p=123.

Tweet This is extensible: you can edit the link text, tweet text, and popup title text under Settings > Tweet This, as well as restricting the links to single posts or pages. You can use these functions in your theme, within the loop:

tweet_this($service, $tweet_text, $link_text, $title_text, $icon_file, $a_class, $img_class, $img_alt) : Echoes a Tweet This link. This is only useful if you disable automatic insertion in the settings. You can leave the arguments blank like ” to use your settings from the options page. These values are permitted for the $services argument: ‘twitter’, ‘plurk’, ‘buzz’, ‘delicious’, ‘digg’, ‘ping’, ‘reddit’, ’su’. The $icon_file argument is for the filename of an image from the /tweet-this/icons/ folder. Example: tweet_this(’twitter’, ‘@richardxthripp [TITLE] [URL]‘, ‘[BLANK]‘, ‘Share on Twitter [[URL]]’, ‘tt-twitter-big3.png’, ‘tweet-this’, ‘tt-image’, ‘Post to Twitter’). $icon_file can be set to “noicon” for a text-only link.

tweet_this_url($tweet_text) : Echoes the Tweet This URL, which is like http://twitter.com/home/?status=Tweet+This+http://37258.th8.us by default. Optional tweet_text argument overrides “Tweet / Plurk Text” from the options menu. An example: tweet_this_url(’@richardxthripp [TITLE] [URL]‘).

tweet_this_short_url() : Just echoes the short URL for the post (Th8.us, TinyURL, etc.), cached if possible.

tweet_this_trim_title() : URL-encodes get_the_title(), truncates it at the nearest word if it’s overly long, and echoes.

tt_option($key) : like get_option(), but specifically for Tweet This’ settings. Useful for retrieving settings from the database. Example: tt_option(’tt_url_service’).

You can prefix the first four of these functions with get_ to return the data without echoing, for further manipulation by PHP.

If you have a post or page for which you do not want a Tweet This link displayed, add a custom field titled “tweet_this_hide” with the value of “true”.

Copyright 2008-2009 Richard X. Thripp ( email : richardxthripp@thripp.com )
Freely released under Version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation, or, at your option, any later version.

Installation

1. Upload the tweet-this folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. If you’re using WordPress MU and want this plugin active for all blogs, move tweet-this.php to /wp-content/mu-plugins/ at this point.
4. Tweet This icons should automatically appear on every post and page! Go to Settings > Tweet This to change stuff.
5. Optionally, delete readme.txt and the screenshots from the tweet-this folder to save space on your server.

Upgrading from v1.3.8 to v1.3.9

Just upload the new tweet-this folder over the old tweet-this folder.

Upgrading from v1.0 - v1.2.3 to v1.3 - v1.3.9

Deactivate Tweet This, delete the tweet-this folder, upload the new tweet-this folder, and activate Tweet This.

Articles about Tweet This

Blogs using Tweet This (over 1400 of them)

Version History

1.3.9: 2009-02-20: Tweet This now outputs properly encoded ampersands and valid HTML. Added warning about bit.ly’s case-sensitive URLs.

1.3.8: 2009-02-19: Added Delicious.com support.

1.3.7: 2009-02-18: Fixed two bugs: tt-twitter-micro3.png could not be selected in the options menu in v1.3.6, and choosing local URLs and checking “Use “www.” instead of “http://” in shortened URLs” would result in URLs starting with “www.www.” on sites using the www. prefix already. Added three Twitter icons to the options menu.

1.3.6: 2009-02-18: Much better handling of URLs: if allow_url_fopen is disabled in PHP, Tweet This attempts to use curl. If that is disabled, Tweet This defaults to local URLs and a warning message is shown in the options. Error messages for fread and curl are now suppressed. Added two small Twitter icons to the options menu.

1.3.5: 2009-02-17: file_get_contents error messages are now suppressed, and if file_get_contents()` is disabled, fread() is used. Added “Insert Google AdSense ads to support Tweet This” option.

1.3.4: 2009-02-16: Added “Only show ‘Tweets about this post’ list when viewing single posts or pages” and “Limit ‘Tweets about this post’ list to XX [2-15] tweets’ options. Got rid of tt_plurk_this() and similar functions, combining them under the tweet_this($service) function. The old functions are now deprecated, to be removed in Tweet This v1.4.

1.3.3: 2009-02-15: Added h3o.de, hex.io, idek.net, and Lin.cr to the URL services list. Added “Don’t shorten URLs under 30 characters” checkbox in options.

1.3.2: 2009-02-10: Added custom arguments to core functions, for manual insertion into your theme. Added “No icon” option in the settings. You can now disable Tweet This links while enabling other services such as Plurk and Digg.

1.3.1: 2009-02-09: Fixed a bug introduced in version 1.3 where images wouldn’t show up if your blog isn’t in the root directory.

1.3: 2009-02-08: Yahoo Buzz, Reddit, and StumbleUpon support added, ri.ms and Adjix.com added to URL services, alignment option added for Tweet This links, RSS feed import as “Tweets about this post” added (tweets displayed below Tweet This links), footer message added, tweet_this_big() removed, options condensed to a serialized array, internationalization support added, streamlined code. Default format is now “[TITLE] [URL]“. If you’re upgrading, deactivate Tweet This and delete the tweet-this folder, then upload the new tweet-this folder and activate. Your old settings will be converted to the new format.

1.2.3: 2009-02-02: Digg and Ping.fm support added: Digg and Ping This Post links and buttons can be enabled in the settings.

1.2.2: 2009-02-01: Plurk support added: Plurk This Post links and buttons can be enabled in the settings.

1.2.1: 2009-01-31: 6 Tweet This buttons by Sascha added, Zi.ma added to URL services, and local fallback code added in case an external URL service goes down.

1.2: 2009-01-30: Full customization options added, local URLs now allowed, Metamark and Tweetburner added, Twitterific bird replace with Twitter logo (by Corey Marion’s request) which is moved to bottom-right, small link is now default, “Hide Tweet This on pages” option added, “www.” prefixing option added, replacement logic for characters like ” (”) added, cleaned up code.

1.1.1: 2008-09-11: I fixed an oversight from 1.1, so tweet_this_small() now works properly. If you stick with 1.1, you have to use echo tweet_this_small() instead to get the link plus icon to show up in your theme.

1.1: 2008-09-11: Added a ton of stuff. Short URLs are cached now, you can disable automatic insertion, tweet text includes post title, and there are configuration options. Also, the icon is 24-bit color. This bumps the file size up (10KB from 4KB), but it looks much cleaner.

1.0: 2008-09-01: First release, simple plugin with no config options.

Thanks to Sascha for the Tweet This buttons, added in v1.2.1:

I modified the above buttons for Plurk This, Buzz This, Delicious, Digg This, Ping This, Reddit This, and Stumble This:

Screenshots

1. Tweet This options page.

2. URL services list.

3. A post with a “Tweet This Post” link and “Tweets about this post” list.

4. One of the 6 Tweet This buttons in action, along with other services.

5. Arriving at Twitter, your reader can start typing about your blog post right away as the cursor is already flashing to the right of the title.

Frequently Asked Questions

= Why not start Tweet This URLs with “www.” instead of “http://”? =

Though it saves space and is the behavior of previous versions of Tweet This, Twitter clients such as TweetDeck will not convert such URLs into links.

= Why is all your HTML and CSS squished together? =

To be insanely efficient! If eliminating non-required tabs and spaces saves 100 bytes per page load, and you get 10,000 per day, you’ve just saved 102 minutes of your visitors’ time per month, assuming they’re all on dialup and you’re not gzipping.

= What’s with all the get_ functions? =

Like in WordPress, the default Tweet This functions echo the result. Most can be prefixed with get_, which returns without echoing, so you can manipulate the data before displaying it.

= How does the cache work? =

Cached short URLs are saved to the postmeta table when a visitor views posts. For any future pageloads, those URLs are loaded, instead of pinging the Th8.us server (or is.gd, TinyURL, etc.). This works, because as long as the post’s permalink doesn’t change, the short URL from the third-party service doesn’t change.

The cache is invalidated by setting the existing short URLs in the postmeta table to “getnew” as needed. By reusing the old fields instead of replacing them, I don’t bump up the meta_id counter needlessly. When the next person visits that post, the get_tweet_this_short_url function in Tweet This sees this and gets a new short URL.

What triggers a cached URL as invalid? When you save a post (including editing and publishing), the cache is invalidated in case you changed the permalink. Secondly, when you change URL services under Settings > Tweet This or change permalink structures under Options > Permalinks, all the cached URLs are set to “getnew”. If you move your blog to a different directory or domain name, just change URL services and then change back to trigger a refresh on the cache.

When you deactivate the plugin, all the cached URLs are deleted.

For more details, look at these functions in tweet-this.php:

flush_tt_cache
delete_tt_cache
global_flush_tt_cache
global_delete_tt_cache
get_tweet_this_short_url

= Why doesn’t Tweet This show when I preview a draft post? =

Because I’d have to fetch a short URL if it did, and the permalink for the post isn’t set yet. It would be something like /?p=1, which would just waste an entry in TinyURL or another service’s database.

= Which short URL service do you recommend? =

Th8.us of course. I created it, and it’s going to be around for hundreds of years. is.gd is good and short, if you don’t mind your short URLs being case-sensitive. TinyURL has a slow API. I tested it, and it takes six seconds to load a page with ten Tweet This links on it if the TinyURLs aren’t cached.

= Can I just use the Tweet This functions without it adding icons to my blog? =

Sure! Activate the plugin, go to Settings > Tweet This, uncheck “Automatically insert Tweet This links,” and click “Save Options.”

= If I change URL services, will the old URLs continue to work? =

Yes. The short URLs are on third-party servers (Th8.us, TinyURL, is.gd, etc.), and they should never delete them.

= Why can’t Tweetburner URLs have the “www.” prefix? =

Because Tweetburner does not work with the www subdomain; use it and your URLs just redirect to the Tweetburner home page.

Click here to read the source code.

Tweet This on WordPress.org.

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