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;
} 


[MOGmartin]

I use a self built system very similar to this as well on my site....

the twitter account is http://twitter.com/seoforumsorg - and the board is at http://seoforums.org

from my experience I get around 50-80 new visitors per day using this method, so its recommended by me!

Great Work for sharing this with the community!

[buro9]

I'm seeing similar numbers. I also think that if you use Friendfeed and hook it up to pull in Twitter that you get double-benefit from it.

[hiker]

Sounds great, I'll install later this week.

Does this work when ANY thread is started, or just any started by ME? I assume it's any thread.

And does it have the ability to leave certain threads excluded?

Thanks.

[buro9]

It works for *ALL* threads by everyone.

Currently the only exclusion is to prevent threads started in specific forums from creating tweets.

All existing threads are not tweeted, this code tweets new threads only.

[hiker]

Originally Posted by buro9

It works for *ALL* threads by everyone.

Currently the only exclusion is to prevent threads started in specific forums from creating tweets.

All existing threads are not tweeted, this code tweets new threads only.

Thanks, I should have clarified - exclude certain FORUMS ... not threads.

I've got an outdoor forum with a general discussion forum. I'd like to exclude the general discussion forum and only tweet the outdoor related forums.

Thanks again, I'll be installing this week.

[buro9]

Ah, it does that... just add the "general" forum to the array of excluded forumIds. Job done.

[Moondust]

Hi, this is not Working, after a new Thread comming the follow Error

You must be authenticated to access shorten on line 193 in /home/erotidbr/erotikforen/forum/bitly.php
#0 /home/erotidbr/erotikforen/forum/bitly.php(382): Bitly->doCall('shorten', Array)
#1 /home/erotidbr/erotikforen/forum/newthread.php(262) : eval()'d code(10): Bitly->shorten('http://www.erot...')
#2 /home/erotidbr/erotikforen/forum/newthread.php(262): eval()
#3 {main}

Warnung: Invalid error type specified in [path]/vb/vb.php (Zeile 284)

[Nordinho]

Could vbseo be interfering with this? Also, if your forum not in root, what settings do you recommend? Getting the error below. Allthough a post on bit.ly gets made. Just not in Twitter.

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 on line 141
{ "errorCode": 0, "errorMessage": "", "results": { "http://www.domain.net/forumdir/showthread.php?t=44434": { "hash": "bi7V5B", "shortCNAMEUrl": "http://bit.ly/d0s0TB", "shortKeywordUrl": "", "shortUrl": "http://bit.ly/d0s0TB", "userHash": "d0s0TB" } }, "statusCode": "OK" }
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'BitlyException' with message 'Invalid JSON-response' in /home/domain.net/public_html/forumdir/bitly.php:196 Stack trace: #0 /home//domain.net/public_html/forumdir/bitly.php(382): Bitly->doCall('shorten', Array) #1 /home/domain.net/public_html/forumdir/newthread.php(273) : eval()'d code(20): Bitly->shorten('http://www.domain...') #2 /home/domain.net/public_html/forumdir/newthread.php(273): eval() #3 /home/domain.net/public_html/forumdir/vbseo.php(1440): require('/home/dom...') #4 {main} thrown in /home/domain.net/public_html/forumdir/bitly.php on line 196

I tried the full path, however then I get this error;

Fatal error: Class 'Bitly' not found in /home/domain.net/public_html/forumdir/newthread.php(273) : eval()'d code on line 19

btw; using vb3.8

[buro9]

@Moondust

Your error appears to be this: "You must be authenticated to access shorten "

Did you insert your bit.ly username and API key?
You probably want to insert your twitter details too.

The instructions do say to put your values in there.

@Nordinho

I'm using vbseo, and I'm using both 3.8 and 4.0. So no, it's not vbseo that is causing it, and it's not 3.8 causing it.

Could it be this: "CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode "?

Are you in safe mode?