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;
} 


[TroyTrojansFan]

I've followed the instructions I believe and have installed everything, but new threads aren't being posted at Twitter. I don't get any error messages on the forums or at Twitter.

I saw that buro9 told someone they could PM him their PHP info so I'm going to do that and see if I might have messed up the syntax.

Thank you for your help, looking forward to getting this fix and running with it.

[ChopSuey]

Wow you are the bomb! Is there a way to get some of the words from the new thread? Just installed, http://forum.vbdiscussions.com - http://twitter.com/vbdiscussions

[I.am]

It doesn't work with vBSEO enabled with custom URL structure, any solution?

[TroyTrojansFan]

Originally Posted by I.am

It doesn't work with vBSEO enabled with custom URL structure, any solution?

Seems it's not working with the new vbseo for me either.

[I.am]

I have tried to replace this string:

PHP Code:

http://www.yourforumsdomain.com/showthread.php?t='.$newpost[threadid] 


with my own custom URL string but without success, it doesn't work.

[TroyTrojansFan]

Originally Posted by I.am

I have tried to replace this string:

PHP Code:

http://www.yourforumsdomain.com/showthread.php?t='.$newpost[threadid] 


with my own custom URL string but without success, it doesn't work.

Yeah, the "showthread.php?t=" is not what shows up in a thread listing page URL when you use vbseo 3.5, so I mentioned to buro9 that might be the problem. But I have no clue. I'm not getting any error messages when I make a thread nor do I see any on the Twitter page. It just looks like nothing is happening. I asked my host and they said that CURL and JSON were enabled as well.

[nci]

Originally Posted by TroyTrojansFan

Seems it's not working with the new vbseo for me either.

That is not true,It does work with VBSEO,I use 3.5 with VB 4.01

Works like Magic.
Installed and Nominated,Simplest and Complete.
I have used Milad version before ,but this rocks !!!,Thanks a million buro 9 ,For the last one Month I have frequent here looking for this.

[newmomsforum]

Works great for me and I'm another new VBSEO user to - Thanks

[Boko577]

Got the authenticated error, and yes, I put in ALL the details. I've checked over and over, and it's correct. Any ideas?

[thisgeek]

Originally Posted by tenjinzan

Got it working perfectly first try. I read through the comments here, but I didn't see it (I may have missed, so forgive me if I did). Is there a way to include the Poster's name in the tweet? I'm not sure what the syntax would be for the tweet line.

Basically, I just want it to say "Thread name" by "Poster" ... bit.ly/url I can see WHERE to put it, but I'm not sure of the variable that refers to the poster of a thread.

I'd also like to do this - just not sure what variable to use (if it's available).

And thanks - mod works perfectly.