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;
} 


[sassou2009]

Hi,

It's Working Fine and thank's but it does not support Arabic !

[Micronichos]

Working perfect, some problem with tildes in spanish, for example:

Remi Gaillard, posiblemente el tipo m?genuino de Internet

instead of

Remi Gaillard, posiblemente el tipo m?s genuino de Internet

If you need my help contact me thank you for such useful mod.

[vilhiem]

OK ... I'm totally confused.

I did everything as instructed ... but just so you know, in your PHP code displayed here ... NOTHING in the code is BOLDED !!!

So, I put in the variables for everything between the '< and >'
Set up all the Twitter and Bit accounts ... put in the info ...

And ... NOTHING happens (no errors either).

So now it makes me wonder if the instructions are not being exactly clear.
For instance, do I need to enter something where it says ... 'prefixid' ...?

Or said another way ... am I supposed to modify everything between the ... ' and ' ...?
Because the instructions say replace either the BOLD (which doesn't show) or everything between the '< and >' (which still doesn't account for the URL, because it's not between the < and> )

[Videx]

The bolding may be long gone, but did you read the first few pages of this mod? They make it very clear what needs to be done. Never ever install a mod without reading the entire thread.

[Juggernaut]

I'm not very good at installing mods, but I installed this mod a while back, following the instructions here, and didn't have any problems at any time, with the installation, the instructions are very clear

[vilhiem]

ok ... my bad ... got it working (sorry I jumped the gun there)

But I do have a question ... it works great ... but is there a simple way to get this to work on "replies" ...? I saw someone in this thread posted a possible solution ... just not sure if it's the best.

Thnx!

[LuisManson]

there seems to be an upgrade to twitter.class here:
http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter_oauth

no idea if the api is the same

[vilhiem]

so ... I incorporated the mod to this mod (contributed by lhridley) ... the one allowing for 'replies' to work too ... and it worked fine! Just be sure to be careful with the code, there's a missing "m" in the ".com" portion of the URL (and I think a few other things). Otherwise, works great!

QUESTION: Is there any way I can transfer the "tags" from new posts to the "#keywords" in the code for this plugin ...?

Thanks!

[vilhiem]

One more question ...

Not sure if anyone else here has noticed this ... but it doesn't seem to work if the new thread is "auto-generated". For instance, I'm using a couple mods that make new threads, yet no "twits" are generated:

(1) "BBR - Welcome Thread Upon Registration"; and
(2) "auto-reply"

[jhellein]

Do I need to create a separate plugin to auto-tweet blog posts in 4.0.3? Will the same code work or does it need to be modified? Thank you.