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;
} 


[melbo]

Works perfectly on my 3.8.5 forum. Is there a way I can make the regular twitter social bookmark button in every thread use my bit.ly? Also, do you have a 'post to Facebook' option??? Would be very cool.

[tommac3]

I would love to install if it works

[stoute]

I seem to have done something wrong here. I receive the error code below;

Warning: require_once(bitly.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/newthread.php(273) : eval()'d code on line 125

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'bitly.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/tttsndcx/public_html/home/newthread.php(273) : eval()'d code on line 125

Any assistance with this would be great! I am using 4.0.3 if that makes a difference.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by stoute

I seem to have done something wrong here. I receive the error code below;
Warning: require_once(bitly.php)

Can we assume you have already read back through all the pages in this thread and haven't found anyone else having the same error?

Hint: Forget bitly; you can't use it on your server.

[jbd]

I get the following error:

The XML page cannot be displayed
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Invalid at the top level of the document. Error processing resource 'http://www.forum.com/newthread.php?do=postthread&...

</hash>

[HipHopStan.com]

i just installed. I'm on PHP 5.2.13 -- using vbSEO 3.3.2 -- and its working great so far for me. I'm also on vB 3.8.2

:up:

[rrudeboy]

works great, only thing i'm looking for is a way to have only posts made by users with an X amount of posts tweeted... you know, to prevent spam tweets.

thanks.

[momon]

Originally Posted by imported_nimbus

Let me share my solution.

bitly.php:
I set the following Curl options:
$options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;
$options[CURLOPT_HEADER] = false;

and for twitter.php:
$options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;

Then all error messages gone!

This is for ppl reporting problems with json still, after reading through the thread, this post in particular finally solved things for me and the plugin is working wonderfully now.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...=234288&page=7

[jahna]

Mine is not working!
can anyone check the my code here please, thanks a lot:

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(3,6);

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

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

if ($useBitly) {
// http://classes.verkoyen.eu/bitly
require_once 'bitly.php';
$bitly = new Bitly('mymafo','http://bit.ly/a6LdSx');
$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('mymafo','xxxxxxxxxx');
$twitter->updateStatus($tweet);

[EconomicVoice]

Originally Posted by imported_nimbus

Let me share my solution.

bitly.php:
I set the following Curl options:
$options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;
$options[CURLOPT_HEADER] = false;

and for twitter.php:
$options[CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION] = false;

Then all error messages gone!

This is the solution that worked for me too (like many others).

Although I didn't seem to have a 'CURLOPT_HEADER' in the bitly php, just changing the other two did the job.