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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;
}

rrudeboy · #**452** 06-23-2010, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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. (short of once again creating a usergroup)

thanks.

anybody who can help ? plz ?...

darren1981 · #**453** 06-23-2010, 08:14 PM

Hey great mod.. but does this put much extra stress on the server ?

Dragonsys · #**454** 06-24-2010, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rrudeboy

anybody who can help ? plz ?...

This mod will not do that currently. I do not know of any which do.

sassou2009 · #**455** 06-26-2010, 01:13 AM

Pleeeeeeeese how to get this work on Arabic vbulletin ?

thesupermario69 · #**456** 06-30-2010, 12:05 PM

Hi,

I have installed this mod and have only got it half working, so I was wondering if anyone can help me out

I get no error messages and I get a tweet posted on Twitter and a link made in bit.ly however the problem is that the tweet only has the thread title in it and then the word "Array", the bit.ly link that was created is not on the tweet. However when I login to bit.ly I can see the link that was created

Any ideas?

Thanks

Sam-TheMaster · #**457** 06-30-2010, 01:46 PM

wow, little hack and ready to go. I really loved this mod. Its good - Can we make option whether to post on twitter or not?

Dragonsys · #**458** 06-30-2010, 11:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thesupermario69

Hi,

I have installed this mod and have only got it half working, so I was wondering if anyone can help me out

I get no error messages and I get a tweet posted on Twitter and a link made in bit.ly however the problem is that the tweet only has the thread title in it and then the word "Array", the bit.ly link that was created is not on the tweet. However when I login to bit.ly I can see the link that was created

Any ideas?

Thanks

are you using the twitter.php which is attached to this page or the one downloaded from http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter/

make sure you use the one attached to the mod post, the one from the link above does not work for everyone.

thesupermario69 · #**459** 07-01-2010, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dragonsys

are you using the twitter.php which is attached to this page or the one downloaded from http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter/

make sure you use the one attached to the mod post, the one from the link above does not work for everyone.

Brilliant! Thank you!

I couldnt download the ones from this post yesterday so used the ones on the link instead and obviously that was the problem

Thanks again

jahna · #**460** 07-01-2010, 12:12 PM

I've installed it but won't work.....
Can someone help me by checking the code below? 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(0);

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

if (!in_array($foruminfo[forumid], $excludedForums = array(6)) {
$shortUrl = 'http://www.mymarketingforum.ch/showthread.php?t='.$newpost[threadid];

if ($useBitly) {
// http://classes.verkoyen.eu/bitly
require_once 'bitly.php';
$bitly = new Bitly('mymafo','http://bit.ly/9nWRYw');
$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','xxxxxxxxx');
$twitter->updateStatus($tweet);
}

Numenorean7 · #**461** 07-05-2010, 01:19 AM

It works great, thanks a bunch

X vBulletin 3.8.12 by vBS Debug Information
Page Generation 0.15489 seconds Memory Usage 2,337KB 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 (2)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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