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]

Originally Posted by Videx

An interesting concept. Instead of instant notification via email, a sort of instant notification via Twitter. Probably nothing you couldn't do with hashtags though, without the need to set up a separate Twitter account for each forum.

I don't think it would work on our forum (a local community site). The users are barely able to understand the concept of email subscriptions. I seriously doubt many of them could handle some sort of Twitter client for that.

In my own case, It would work fine on my desktop where I have Trillian displaying tweets on my second monitor. But I rarely run Twitter when on mobile, so would be a huge fail compared to instant email notifications.

Well if you use something like VB Cerberus to split your forums up as is separate Twitter accounts are already being used. Hash tags just won't do it.

I'm sure this could be modified to do what I'm asking by someone.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by sticky

I'm sure this could be modified to do what I'm asking by someone.

Maybe, but this one hasn't worked at all in a long time and the coder isn't around any longer. Thank goodness he labeled it 'reusable code' before he left!

Personally, I would like to see any such mod also include Facebook posts. Right now it's way too difficult. I can't even begin to imagine how you would handle multiple accounts on FB or even if they allow it.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by Videx

Maybe, but this one hasn't worked at all in a long time and the coder isn't around any longer. Thank goodness he labeled it 'reusable code' before he left!

Personally, I would like to see any such mod also include Facebook posts. Right now it's way too difficult. I can't even begin to imagine how you would handle multiple accounts on FB or even if they allow it.

So with no updates does this still work? Or is there another mod?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by sticky

So with no updates does this still work? Or is there another mod?

If you read back you'll find that a few people have managed to hack the heck out of it and get it working. But there's an actual working and supported product at: WS vBulletin Tweet Poster

[sticky]

Originally Posted by Videx

If you read back you'll find that a few people have managed to hack the heck out of it and get it working. But there's an actual working and supported product at: WS vBulletin Tweet Poster

Thank you.

[Spangle]

Had to disable this as it's not working on 4.2 patch 3

First error was require once file not found on line 29 newthread .php

Think I sorted that out, then I got an error about an unexpected T in Twitter.php on line2

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Spangle

Had to disable this as it's not working on 4.2 patch 3
...

Don't ever install a mod without reading the entire thread. Or at least the last few pages. In your case, you seemed to have even missed my post just two above yours!

[betts02]

INVALID_LOGIN on line 219 in /home3/nextgen6/public_html/forums/bitly.php
#0 /home3/nextgen6/public_html/forums/bitly.php(470): Bitly->doCall('shorten', Array)
#1 /home3/nextgen6/public_html/forums/newthread.php(277) : eval()'d code(14): Bitly->shorten('http://www.next...')
#2 /home3/nextgen6/public_html/forums/newthread.php(277): eval()
#3 {main}

Warning: Invalid error type specified in [path]/vb/vb.php on line 286

Any ideas on whats wrong here please ? Cheers

[Videx]

Originally Posted by betts02

Any ideas on whats wrong here please ? Cheers

I don't mind repeating myself for newbies (much). But as a coder you really should know better than to basically post "it doesn't work", especially for a mod that hasn't worked in ages.

If I can assume that as a coder you read this entire thread before installing, including my post immediately before yours, then you really need to post some more info about what you've done so far to get it working. The mod is marked as reusable, so you're welcome to try fixing it, but really your efforts might be better spent on a mod to post to Facebook right now.

[betts02]

Firstly where in your infinite wisdom do you see me posting "It Doesn't work" ?
Exactly, I never posted that, I simply posted the error i got and asked if anyone had any ideas

Secondly as a coder i made a couple of simple HTML edits which i shared with the community and which is why i got placed in the 'Coder' usergroup

Thirdly i do not want anything from my site posted to facebook as everything that gets posted on my twitter account gets automatically posted to my facebook account

Fourthly i have read every page and see some have no issues or have at least got it working, I do not wish to use the other mod as it is different to this

So in all of that, Please think before you reply