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;
} 


[DAMINK]

Originally Posted by mairving

Thanks for the help. What it boils down to, essentially, is that this mod is a piece of crap. Right? LOL

Works for me without an issue and im on 4.2.0 so honestly no i would have to disagree.

[mairving]

I know. It was a little sarcasm. Videx seems to have a strong distaste with this mod (and maybe for people like me that don't read all 40 pages of the thread).

[grunty1]

Hey mairving I encountered the same problem at first! The solution is that in the array you need to break up the numbers.

I.e. instead of "1,2,3,4"

it should be "1, 2, 3, 4"

That fixed it for me.

[cuco88]

I tried this with my 4.2.0-board. It didn't work, the bit.ly-thing threw out errors. After fixing that the twitter-thing threw out other and more complicated errors. I tried to fix it and I got it working. But many changes were needed. I try to tell you:

At first, don't use the attached bitly.php. Use the linked one in the first posting. Or take this link:
http://classes.verkoyen.eu/bitly
unzip it, place it in the forum-root

Second: the twitter-API only accepts oAuth now, no basic username/password authentication anymore. So you have to use the new twitter.php. Don't use the one attached to the first posting. And don't use the one linked in the first posting. Use this one instead: http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter_oauth
unzip it. Don't place it in the forum root now! We have to edit it!

Now you have to get a legacy-API-key from bit.ly: https://bitly.com/a/settings/advanced
And you need oAuth-data from twitter. Use this link: https://dev.twitter.com/ then click on "my applications" in the menu on the upper right. Click on "create new application" and enter your data. (you don't need to enter a callback-url) Then your app is created. Click on "settings" and then switch to "Read, Write and Access direct messages". Update application settings. Go back on the "details"-tab and click on "create my access-token". Go to tab "oAuth tool" You will see four keys now. You need all of them. Open your twitter.php, search for "private $oAuthToken = ' ';" Place the "Access token" here. Then search for "private $oAuthTokenSecret = ' ';" Place your "Aceess token secret" between the ' ' here. Now save the file and upload it to your forum root. The other two codes (consumer key, consumer secret) are needed in the plugin-script, see below.

Go to plugin-manager and create a new plugin:
vBulletin
newthread_post_complete
Tweet to Twitter

Now use the following code
If you want to exclude some forums, edit this line:
$excludedForums = array(1, 2);
and place the forum-ids between the brackets. use array() if you don't want to exclude any forums.

this line:
$shortUrl = 'http://yourURLhere.com/showthread.php?t='.$newpost[threadid];
change "YourURLhere.com" to your forum-URL.

In this line:
$bitly = new Bitly('username', 'API_key');
you have to put in your bit.ly-username and the generated API-key.

And in this line:
$twitter = new Twitter('consumer-key','consumer-secret');
you have to put in the consumer-key and the consumer-secret from the twitter o-auth-tool.

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(1, 2);

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

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

    if ($useBitly) {
      // http://classes.verkoyen.eu/bitly
      require_once 'bitly.php';
      $bitly = new Bitly('username', 'API_key');
      $result_bit = array();
      $result_bit = $bitly->shorten($shortUrl);
      $shortUrl = $result_bit['url'];
    }

    $tweet = '';
    if (isset($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('consumer-key','consumer-secret');
    $twitter->statusesUpdate($tweet);
} 


Save and activate it. This worked for me :-) No curl-erros anymore, no "unauthorized access" errors anymore, no .... errors, just working

[nyenius]

cuco88 thanks in advance for your post, but i've followed all your steps and ends up with this kind of message:

------WebKitFormBoundary*******************--

why is that?

**im using vb4.2

[cuco88]

Where do you get this message? Does the forum work or do you only get this message?

And does the plugin do anything? Is there a shortened link when you login to your bit.ly-account? Is there a tweet on Twitter?

If found a bug in the Twitter.php when using Unicode values with more than 1 byte, I have an easy fix for that, but I don't think this is the problem. Or are you using non english characters? Like ä ö ü é â, ...?

[nyenius]

Right afer I submitted new thread. It just shows these lines and blank white screen.

The thread submitted correctly, but there's nothing new appears on bitly or twitter.

I not using non-english character either. I just copy-pasted the cde, that's all.

[cuco88]

Looks like a problem with JSON. This can happen with the bitly.php. Try set
$useBitly = true;
to
$useBitly = false;

[nyenius]

first time I encountered this error, it was the bitly disabled. then I enabled it, still the same message. Is it the hosting configuration?

[Videx]

The problem is you're trying to use a mod that hasn't worked in a long time. Presumably because you neglected to read back a few posts and discover this fact. This is vital, especially when you can see from post #1 that the author hasn't been around for ages.

You can keep playing around trying to get this one to work, or you can just go use one that does: WS vBulletin Tweet Poster