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;
} 


[linuxututs]

Originally Posted by pinoquio46

@Videx

This plugin works fine for me.

I assume that the user @asuccar make this change : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=528
and followed my tip on my previous post.

by chance, have you tried putting Latin characters in thread titles (? ? ?) using vBulletin2Twitter, it don?t apear in twitter!!

And another thing, while is not created an exclusion list of forums in mod vBulletin2Twitter I'll use this plugin.

int?

Is right, this plugin does still work just fine, just follow the edits above.

Thanks,

vB 4.0.7

[pedroenf]

My threads take too long to be created with this mod activated, sometimes more than 2 minutes. Does anyone has the same problem?

[onehost]

I notice a lot of shorten urls on tweeter, and have noticed this mod requires
or suggests that you use a shorten url service...I am curious to know why?

Thanks.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by onehost

I notice a lot of shorten urls on tweeter, and have noticed this mod requires or suggests that you use a shorten url service...I am curious to know why.

Two reasons. First, Twitter only allows 140 characters, so long urls can get cut off. Second, shortening services usually allow some method for you to see how many people are actually clicking the link.

But shortening isn't usually necessary at all.

[onehost]

I think everything is right, but I get error, even tried setting it to false, still got error.
maybe someone can help, here is part of the error listed below.

Basic authentication is not supported on line 204 in /home/bigboard/public_html/seoscripts.com/twitter.php
#0 /home/bigboard/public_html/seoscripts.com/twitter.php(648): Twitter->doCall('statuses/update...', Array, true)
#1 /home/bigboard/public_html/seoscripts.com/newthread.php(274) : eval()'d code(91): Twitter->updateStatus('SEOScripts.com ...')
#2 /home/bigboard/public_html/seoscripts.com/newthread.php(274): eval()
#3 /home/bigboard/public_html/seoscripts.com/vbseo.php(1392): require('/home/bigboard/...')
#4 {main}

Fatal error: Basic authentication is not supported on line 204 in [path]/twitter.php in [path]/vb/vb.php on line 287

The error just goes on and on, but maybe this is enough for someone to help, otherwise
I can post the whole thing if really needed.

Thanks

[Videx]

Originally Posted by onehost

Basic authentication is not supported ...

Apparently there must be at least one Twitter server that someone failed to switch over to oAuth, because everytime I say this someone chimes in and says it's still working for them. But please see post #538.

[onehost]

Thanks..

This was a complete waste of time...might as well close this thead, and not waste someone elses time and redirect them from the start....so that people do not waste their time setting this up to find out it doesnt work,, then opps have to visit another thread.

[pedroenf]

Originally Posted by onehost

Thanks..

This was a complete waste of time...might as well close this thead, and not waste someone elses time and redirect them from the start....so that people do not waste their time setting this up to find out it doesnt work,, then opps have to visit another thread.

And what about you reading the all thread or, at least, some posts back? You'll find out that it would be better to keep the "mouth shut" before reading! This mod works.

Originally Posted by pedroenf

My threads take too long to be created with this mod activated, sometimes more than 2 minutes. Does anyone has the same problem?

Anyone?

[proxx]

is it possible to make it so that it submits to twitter at a delayed rate ? for example, i want 1 tweet per 10 minutes and evenly throughout day and night. Is this possible? any solution ?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by proxx

is it possible to make it so that it submits to twitter at a delayed rate ? for example, i want 1 tweet per 10 minutes and evenly throughout day and night. Is this possible? any solution ?

Not very easily. You would have to code some sort of FIFO buffer, and you would have to account for the possibility that if you had too many posts, it couldn't save a backlog longer than x days. And it would have to account for slow days - if a new post came in more than 10 minutes from the last, it would have to go out immediately and start the 10 minute counter fresh.