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;
} 


[jwood01]

Installed and operational in 7 minutes following the directions, including remembering my twitter password.

Thank you for doing this for the community.

[LbR]

Originally Posted by Videx

"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.

I would prefer waiting you to build up a mod, That fix all the problems like that. I wasted so many hours to get it work. Your 3.8.X product was great. While the Owner of this Mod is sleeping...

[Videx]

Originally Posted by LbR

Your 3.8.X product was great.

You have me confused with someone else. I have never released a product and can barely code "Hello World!" in HTML.

You can try the other tweet mod vBulletin2Twitter , but since it sounds like a server issue I doubt that will work for you either. However, that mod's author charges for support, so if you pay the fee you may be able to talk him into logging into your server and looking around for a solution. You'll have to trust him with your server credentials for that.

[LbR]

Originally Posted by Videx

You have me confused with someone else. I have never released a product and can barely code "Hello World!" in HTML.

You can try the other tweet mod vBulletin2Twitter , but since it sounds like a server issue I doubt that will work for you either. However, that mod's author charges for support, so if you pay the fee you may be able to talk him into logging into your server and looking around for a solution. You'll have to trust him with your server credentials for that.

Oh sorry man, I thought you made that haha anyways sorry

[123LearnToTrade]

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?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by 123LearnToTrade

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?

Not easily. Somewhere buried in all the threads about automatic posters is the fact that they use a different hook or something to do their posting, so it bypasses these mods. This could change in a future version of vb4, or someone may figure out a way around it eventually.

[MrCookie]

Hi Guys,

sorry for my bad english. Thx for this hack but i have a Problem:

I insert this php code in my Plug in:

// 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 = false;

if (!in_array($foruminfo[forumid], $excludedForums)) {
$shortUrl = 'http://www.MeineDomain.de/showthread.php?t='.$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('BlaBlaBla','BlaBlaBla');
$twitter->updateStatus($tweet);

and the system tell me :

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /var/www/web1/html/newthread.php(262): eval()'d code on line 27

Is the php Code wrong or What?s the problem?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by MrCookie

Is the php Code wrong or What?s the problem?

I'm not going to study the entire thing, but it looks like you have at least left out the closing bracket. Thus, the code tries to continue on into the next module, throwing that 'unexpected end' error.

[captainslater]

I get this error message:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'BitlyException' with message 'H' in /var/www/vhosts/hogwarts-forum.de/httpdocs/bitly.php:201 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/vhosts/hogwarts-forum.de/httpdocs/bitly.php(390): Bitly->doCall('shorten', Array) #1 /var/www/vhosts/hogwarts-forum.de/httpdocs/newthread.php(273) : eval()'d code(14): Bitly->shorten('http://www.hogw...') #2 /var/www/vhosts/hogwarts-forum.de/httpdocs/newthread.php(273): eval() #3 {main} thrown in /var/www/vhosts/hogwarts-forum.de/httpdocs/bitly.php on line 201

What have I done wrong?

[munsonfan15]

Seems to work great - installed