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vBulletin to Twitter, live tweets of new threads · **Released**: 01-26-2010

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;
}

zeroality · #**282** 03-09-2010, 05:09 AM

This one is better, simple product import.

LbR · #**283** 03-10-2010, 03:31 PM

how to fix this

Videx · #**284** 03-10-2010, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LbR

how to fix this

Invalid JSON-response on line

Please refer to post #1 in this thread.

Quote:

Q: I see an "INVALID_JSON" error

A: Disable bitly by setting $useBitly to false.

LbR · #**285** 03-10-2010, 05:41 PM

@ Videx

now this comes

/statuses/update.xml Could not authenticate you. Unauthorized on line 229 in /home/admin/emonx.com/forum/twitter.php
#0 /home/admin/emonx.com/forum/twitter.php(648): Twitter->doCall('statuses/update...', Array, true)
#1 /home/admin/emonx.com/forum/newthread.php(262) : eval()'d code(26): Twitter->updateStatus('tgerrrrrrrrrree...')
#2 /home/admin/emonx.com/forum/newthread.php(262): eval()
#3 {main}

LbR · #**286** 03-10-2010, 05:43 PM

It was working fine when i was on Shared hosting now on VPS it doesnt works

Videx · #**287** 03-10-2010, 10:36 PM

"Could not authenticate you" (with Twitter) is going to be more difficult. Look back through the thread and you'll see others with the problem, and they don't seem to have had a lot of luck solving it.

Globus · #**288** 03-11-2010, 05:47 AM

Hello everyone!

First, buro9 Thank You for the great plugin you have done for the public and been so good in replying to our not so smart questions!

However, i was not able to get it going from the first kick! After reading about 12 pages of this thread and trying everything possible I Got IT going.

The working conditions(in my case) are:
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!

Budget101 · #**289** 03-11-2010, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Videx

I'm not a coder, but after hacking away with these two mods I finally got one that works for me. I made no claim to credit for anything, nor am I suggesting anyone should use mine.

Well, First KUDOS to you Videx, If you were close buy I'd buy you a CASE of Beer. I tried the original code here and no matter WHAT I did bit.ly would NOT work. Then I went over and downloaded vBulletin2Twitter and that didn't work either. 6 1/2 hours of tweaking, reading tons of posts and signing up to a "support" forum only to find out that you have to Pay for help on the "hacks", I finally discovered your post and gave it a go. It's working wonderfully.

Thank you - Thank You - Thank you.

Videx · #**290** 03-11-2010, 05:08 PM

Quote:

only to find out that you have to Pay for help on the "hacks"

Actually, let's wish the guy the best of luck. Every day I see people post "I'll pay to get this or that". Well, Mosh seems to know his way around this code (unlike myself), so now is the time to support his endeavors. I'm sure he will only make this mod better, and god knows I couldn't have gotten mine working at all if not for him.

123LearnToTrade · #**291** 03-11-2010, 06:18 PM

If I have an RSS feed I am importing and it is posting a new thread with the RSS feed info in it, for some reason this does not post that thread to twitter. Is there a way to modify this?

X vBulletin 3.8.12 by vBS Debug Information
Page Generation 0.16420 seconds Memory Usage 2,334KB Queries Executed 25 (?)
More Information
Template Usage: (1)SHOWTHREAD (1)ad_footer_end (1)ad_footer_start (1)ad_header_end (1)ad_header_logo (1)ad_navbar_below (1)ad_showthread_beforeqr (4)bbcode_php (4)bbcode_quote (1)footer (1)forumjump (1)forumrules (1)gobutton (1)header (1)headinclude (1)modsystem_post (1)navbar (4)navbar_link (120)option (1)pagenav (1)pagenav_curpage (4)pagenav_pagelink (2)pagenav_pagelinkrel (11)post_thanks_box (11)post_thanks_button (1)post_thanks_javascript (1)post_thanks_navbar_search (11)post_thanks_postbit_info (10)postbit (11)postbit_onlinestatus (11)postbit_wrapper (1)spacer_close (1)spacer_open (1)tagbit_wrapper Phrase Groups Available: global inlinemod postbit posting reputationlevel showthread	Included Files: ./showthread.php ./global.php ./includes/init.php ./includes/class_core.php ./includes/config.php ./includes/functions.php ./includes/class_hook.php ./includes/modsystem_functions.php ./includes/functions_bigthree.php ./includes/class_postbit.php ./includes/class_bbcode.php ./includes/functions_reputation.php ./includes/functions_post_thanks.php Hooks Called: init_startup init_startup_session_setup_start init_startup_session_setup_complete cache_permissions fetch_threadinfo_query fetch_threadinfo fetch_foruminfo style_fetch cache_templates global_start parse_templates global_setup_complete showthread_start showthread_getinfo forumjump showthread_post_start showthread_query_postids showthread_query bbcode_fetch_tags bbcode_create showthread_postbit_create postbit_factory postbit_display_start post_thanks_function_post_thanks_off_start post_thanks_function_post_thanks_off_end post_thanks_function_fetch_thanks_start post_thanks_function_fetch_thanks_end post_thanks_function_thanked_already_start post_thanks_function_thanked_already_end fetch_musername postbit_imicons bbcode_parse_start bbcode_parse_complete_precache bbcode_parse_complete postbit_display_complete post_thanks_function_can_thank_this_post_start pagenav_page pagenav_complete tag_fetchbit_complete forumrules navbits navbits_complete showthread_complete
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