Miscellaneous Hacks - vBulletin to Twitter, live tweets of new threads

This should work on all 4 and 3 versions of vBulletin as it's trivial.

Description:

You start a new thread, this hack makes a tweet about it on your twitter account.

This are live updates... not delayed, not based on RSS... the instant the thread is started, a tweet is made. This is how this hack differs from other hacks.

Why:

Mostly for SEO, but also as an alert system.

For SEO the idea is simply that search engines are drinking from the Twitter firehose and are indexing the links that are tweeted. Faster and increased indexing of your site benefits you by helping it be found.

For alerts it means that users are able to use whatever twitter client they wish to obtain updates. A lot of these provide filtering capabilities, so they're able to get a live filtered stream of updates that interest them. This works very well when you also use thread prefixes.

Pre-requisites:

You should have an account on bit.ly for URL shortening, and you should have an account on Twitter.

Go and register if you haven't yet:
http://bit.ly/
http://twitter.com/

Installation:

NOTE: Most problems are related to not putting your bit.ly or twitter user details in the plugin. Follow the instructions carefully!

Upload the two attached files to your forum root. These are twitter and bitly classes that enable the hack to work, you can also download these from the author:
http://classes.verkoyen.eu/bitly
http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter/

Go to the plugin manager and create a new plugin with the following details:
Product: vBulletin
Hook: newthread_post_complete
Title: Tweet to Twitter

PHP Code: [See below]

To configure the PHP code you need to know your bit.ly API key (go get it from bit.ly/account) and your username and password for twitter.

You also should make a list of the forumIds that are non-public as you will want to put these in the array provided.

i.e. if your admin forum is forumId = 7 and you also have a private forum for regular members which is forumid = 12, then you will want this:
$excludedForums = array(7, 12);

The PHP code should be this, with all of the relevant values for your forum inserted (replace everything bolded, including the < and > bits):

PHP Code:

// The array below are the ids of non-public forums, update these to be your admin forum ids or anything non-public by default
$excludedForums = array(0);

// If you are having trouble getting bitly URL shortening to work... disable it!
$useBitly = true;

if (!in_array($foruminfo[forumid], $excludedForums)) {
    $shortUrl = 'http://www.yourforumsdomain.com/showthread.php?t='.$newpost[threadid];

    if ($useBitly) {
      // http://classes.verkoyen.eu/bitly
      require_once 'bitly.php';
      $bitly = new Bitly('<bit.ly username>', '<bit.ly API key>');
      $shortUrl = $bitly->shorten($shortUrl);
    }

    $tweet = '';
    if (isset($newpost['prefixid']) && $newpost['prefixid'] != '') {
        $tweet = $vbphrase['prefix_'.$newpost['prefixid'].'_title_plain'].' ';
    }
    $tweet .= $newpost['title'].' '.$shortUrl;

    // http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter/
    require_once 'twitter.php';
    $twitter = new Twitter('<twitter username>','<twitter password>');
    $twitter->updateStatus($tweet);
} 


So the bit.ly line might look like this after you've put your values in:
$bitly = new Bitly('testUser', 'R_hj3456hgf3hig56hi2gf6');
NOT
$bitly = new Bitly('<testUser>', '<R_hj3456hgf3hig56hi2gf6>');
See? Remove those <> bits, they just show what to replace.

The shortUrl line might look like this:
$shortUrl = 'http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t='.$newpost[threadid];

The Twitter line might look like this:
$twitter = new Twitter('stephenfry','op1umisn1ce');

All make sense?

And that's it. Save and activate the plugin and create a test thread.

Now whenever a new thread is started, a tweet will be made to twitter instantly.

You can see this in effect here:
http://twitter.com/lfgss

That is being pushed new threads for http://www.lfgss.com/ and it's working perfectly.

Any questions?

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Q: It doesn't work!

A: That's not a question, however if it doesn't work then it's extremely likely you got your username and passwords wrong or left the < > signs in there. Double-check and do it again.

Q: I see an "INVALID_JSON" error

A: Disable bitly by setting $useBitly to false.
Q: I see an "You must be authenticated to access shorten" error

A: The credentials that you entered are either wrong, or you made a mess of the syntax. You did remove the < > when you put your values in right? Did you check the example given above?

Q: I see an error that says "Warning: curl_setopt_array() [function.curl-setopt-array]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set in [path]/bitly.php"

A: Wow, that's a good one... but easily fixable. Insert this at line 136 (just after the CURL options) in bitly.php:

PHP Code:

$no_hack_needed = (ini_get('safe_mode') !== '1' && ini_get('open_basedir') === false);
if ($no_hack_needed) {
  $options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = true;
} else {
  $options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;
  $options[CURLOPT_HEADER] = true;
} 


[sticky]

I'm considering installing this as I want more traffic but won't people get offended or annoyed with every new thread being tweeted?

[milaszewski]

Originally Posted by nstlx

I solved the problem like this:

$tweet .= utf8_encode($newpost['title'].' '.$shortUrl);

Twitter uses utf8, so it with be ok also with English....

nstlx

it doesn't work... my forum is not utf8, it's iso-8859-2

[milaszewski]

Originally Posted by milaszewski

it doesn't work... my forum is not utf8, it's iso-8859-2

solved!
I added this line:
$tweet = iconv("ISO-8859-2", "UTF-8", $tweet);

[Videx]

Originally Posted by sticky

I'm considering installing this as I want more traffic but won't people get offended or annoyed with every new thread being tweeted?

On a busy forum they certainly could. I use Digsby and always have a window open showing nothing but new threads on the forum, but not everyone is savvy enough to use filters like that.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by Videx

On a busy forum they certainly could. I use Digsby and always have a window open showing nothing but new threads on the forum, but not everyone is savvy enough to use filters like that.

I see, so is there something that can allow to pick and choose which threads to tweet by clicking a button instead of doing it manually?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by sticky

I see, so is there something that can allow to pick and choose which threads to tweet by clicking a button instead of doing it manually?

Who the heck would have the time to sit and do that in a timely fashion? Especially on a busy board. More realistically, just limit tweeting to exclude your busiest forums. But there's nothing stopping you from manually tweeting if you really want to go that route.

[Jabong82]

Anyone else have a separate Twitter account?

I just use this for SEO and have a separate account that people can follow. So 1 account for your updates/followers and another just for this mod.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by Videx

Who the heck would have the time to sit and do that in a timely fashion? Especially on a busy board. More realistically, just limit tweeting to exclude your busiest forums. But there's nothing stopping you from manually tweeting if you really want to go that route.

I know, but what I was hoping is simply a tweet button next to where it says quote which would tweet the thread using a url shortener. Simple... I don't want to spam my followers with every thread.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by Jabong82

Anyone else have a separate Twitter account?

I just use this for SEO and have a separate account that people can follow. So 1 account for your updates/followers and another just for this mod.

I see, two accounts would work but if there are no followers what is the point?

[Jabong82]

Originally Posted by sticky

I see, two accounts would work but if there are no followers what is the point?

Well if you have your posts tweeted, they create outside links to your site, which is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization (ie. ranking higher on google).

So yah no one would see it because you'd have no followers on that account, but in theory your search engine rankings should improve which is good for your overall site traffic.