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;
} 


[Videx]

Originally Posted by giorgino

What's wrong?

Who knows. But since this version is due to stop working soon, nobody should bother trying to get it to work any more. Use the other one: vBulletin2Twitter

[Dragonsys]

Originally Posted by giorgino

I've this problem with bitly setted up to false

{ "status_code": 200, "status_txt": "OK", "data": { "long_url": "http:\/\/www.immobilio.it\/showthread.php?t=6139", "url": "http:\/\/bit.ly\/c2CwZT", "hash": "c2CwZT", "global_hash": "dt21Ec", "new_hash": 1 } } Invalid JSON-response on line 202 in /var/www/vhosts/immobilio.it/httpdocs/bitly.php
#0 /var/www/vhosts/immobilio.it/httpdocs/bitly.php(413): Bitly->doCall('shorten', Array)
#1 /var/www/vhosts/immobilio.it/httpdocs/newthread.php(274) : eval()'d code(14): Bitly->shorten('http://www.immo...')
#2 /var/www/vhosts/immobilio.it/httpdocs/newthread.php(274): eval()
#3 /var/www/vhosts/immobilio.it/httpdocs/vbseo.php(1392): require('/var/www/vhosts...')
#4 {main}

What's wrong?

Q: I see an "INVALID_JSON" error

A: Disable bitly by setting $useBitly to false.

[Sgroove]

How can I pull tweets from the CMS ?
The URL is http://www.domainname/forum/content.php

Thanks,
Leo

[egexperiment626]

I keep getting the following error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /path/forums/newthread.php(271):eval()'d code on line 7

It will create the new thread but it will not go to Bit or Twitter.

I've read through the entire thread and I've seen other people post a similar error, but I'm not seeing that it has been solved. Anybody have an idea on how to fix it?

[Boko577]

This doesn't work with threads that are made by a bot from an RSS feed. Any reason why it will not?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Boko577

This doesn't work with threads that are made by a bot from an RSS feed. Any reason why it will not?

Basically because those posts don't come from the same direction as posts made by a live person. Ditto any other automatic posts, like those from the calendar (Event Forums).

[Boko577]

Originally Posted by Videx

Basically because those posts don't come from the same direction as posts made by a live person. Ditto any other automatic posts, like those from the calendar (Event Forums).

Is there a way to make it work though?

[Kingdombuilder]

After reading through loads of pages i followed the adjustments below and I'm closer than I have ever been. Currently I'm able to post to twitter as long as i set the bit.ly to false in my plugin.

Originally Posted by Globus

vB 4.0.2
vBSEO 3.5: Custom URLs
Charset: UTF-8 ( Russian)
User details: correct
CURL: installed.
JSON: enabled.
Safe_Mode: off

bitly.php CURL options:

PHP Code:

// set options
        $options[CURLOPT_URL] = $url;
        $options[CURLOPT_PORT] = self::API_PORT;
        $options[CURLOPT_USERAGENT] = $this->getUserAgent();
        $options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;
        $options[CURLOPT_HEADER] = false;
        $options[CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER] = true;
        $options[CURLOPT_TIMEOUT] = (int) $this->getTimeOut(); 


tweeter.php CURL options:

PHP Code:

// set options
        $options[CURLOPT_URL] = $url;
        $options[CURLOPT_PORT] = self::TWITTER_API_PORT;
        $options[CURLOPT_USERAGENT] = $this->getUserAgent();
        $options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;
        $options[CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER] = true;
        $options[CURLOPT_TIMEOUT] = (int) $this->getTimeOut(); 


Hope it helps somebody.
All the best!

When I set it to true I get the following error:

You must be authenticated to access shorten on line 194 in /usr/local/4admin/apache/vhosts/blackberryspot.com/httpdocs/forum/bitly.php
#0 /usr/local/4admin/apache/vhosts/blackberryspot.com/httpdocs/forum/bitly.php(383): Bitly->doCall('shorten', Array)
#1 /usr/local/4admin/apache/vhosts/blackberryspot.com/httpdocs/forum/newthread.php(262) : eval()'d code(14): Bitly->shorten('http://www.Blac...')
#2 /usr/local/4admin/apache/vhosts/blackberryspot.com/httpdocs/forum/newthread.php(262): eval()
#3 {main}


Warning: Invalid error type specified in [path]/vb/vb.php on line 284

Can anyone shed any light on this problem?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Boko577

Is there a way to make it work though?

Probably, at some point. But not by me. It may require different hooks in the vb code itself, I dunno.

A reminder: This mod is going to stop working in August since it has not been modified to work with Twitter's new oauth. Everyone should stop fooling with it.

[Microlex]

Hello, I've installed the pluging but i'm having the following warning/errors msg:

Warning: require_once() [function.require-once]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in [path]/newthread.php(274) : eval()'d code on line 12

Warning: require_once(http://www.microlex.com.ar/foro/bitly.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in [path]/newthread.php(274) : eval()'d code on line 12

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'http://www.microlex.com.ar/foro/bitly.php' (include_path='.:/opt/php5/lib/php') in /home/xxxxxxxxx/public_html/foro/newthread.php(274) : eval()'d code on line 12

We will appreciate your help

Thanks!