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;
} 


[pant]

There's a better mod available that is easier to install and has lots of lovely options.

[giorgino]

Originally Posted by pant

There's a better mod available that is easier to install and has lots of lovely options.

link?

[xabo]

Hello

Im getting this error when posting in my forum:

Fatal error: Call to undefined method Twitter::updateStatus() in /home/raverno/public_html/oddseksperten.no/newthread.php(273) : eval()'d code on line 26

Any clue?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by xabo

Fatal error: Call to undefined method

That's a new one. You sure you uploaded the classes files to the right place?

BTW, Twitter is changing authorization at the end of the month and this mod is presumably going to stop working then.

[pant]

Originally Posted by giorgino

link?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=236278

[Mosh]

Originally Posted by Videx

BTW, Twitter is changing authorization at the end of the month and this mod is presumably going to stop working then.

Yes, Videx is correct, this hack will stop working, the same as with my version.

[pant]

Would it not be fairly easy for a coder to get it working again?

[ragtek]

Is there any working add-on for vB4?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by ragtek

Is there any working add-on for vB4?

You mean like the one linked 3 posts above yours?

Note that this whole thing is very dependent on lots of server settings and some people have been unable to get it working.

[CRDeveloper]

Tonight i started getting this error after new threads:

Bad Gateway on line 229 in /home/toxxxic/public_html/foro/twitter.php
#0 /home/toxxxic/public_html/foro/twitter.php(648): Twitter->doCall('statuses/update...', Array, true)
#1 /home/toxxxic/public_html/foro/newthread.php(262) : eval()'d code(26): Twitter->updateStatus('Lesbians Becomi...')
#2 /home/toxxxic/public_html/foro/newthread.php(262): eval()
#3 {main}


Warning: Invalid error type specified in [path]/vb/vb.php on line 284

The tweets still working but what about that??

I red about this mod and the other one will stop working, so is twitter.com already making changes???

Whats up with this mod https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=216346 ?
That one uses OAuth authentication but for 3.8.x boards...

Anyways im confuse, im gonna have to uninstall this mod since it will stop working and tell my users to tweet them selfs haha