Dave PC Guy » social networking

WP to Twitter Plugin

Admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:27:57 +0000

WP to Twitter | Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design.

I’ve just discovered the craziest, awesomest plugin for WordPress. This little fella allows your WP blog to automatically update your Twitter with the the blog title, a shortlink URL (cli.gs or bit.ly), and even an excerpt!

It has a lot of customizable options, so you can do a ton of things with it. You can use the custom fields in your blog (they’re under the posting options when you’re writing your post) and add them there. One great thing is that there’s an option which lets this plugin add all of the tags you add to the post, as hashtags.

For those of you not literate with twitter a hashtag is a sort of tag that you’d normally use on your blog posts, deviantart submissions (for you crazy art people), and other places. It is preceded by a hash (#) and followed by the tag word. Look at the trends, most of them are hashtags. It makes searching twitter much easier.

Anyways, here’s what’s happening. The sample twitter update should read something like this:

New Post: WP to Twitter Plugin (http://bit.ly/whatever) #twitter #web #social #etc

I think that’s reasonable, no? You can, of course customize this! EVEN FOR SEPARATE AUTHORS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE TWITTER ACCOUNTS!

Anyways Enjoy!

P.S. It also notifies you if the tweet could not be update and saves all options just in case you want to re-tweet

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Bit.ly API and adding URLs to your MySQL database

Admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:16:10 +0000

In my last tutorial, I’ve touched on how to use the to.ly API and how to make automatic “Tweet it” buttons with a relevant message.
Well, this can get problematic if with every page refresh, your server sends out a request to the to.ly server for a short link. Pretty soon, you’ll be getting “Too Many Connections” and you’re screwed. Just like I was, so here’s an idea. How about we store those links in a database….automatically?

You see, it’s much easier to create a script that will request a shortlink, adds the link to the database, and then just call it up whenever you need it. It works perfectly well on my quote site. Basically, whenever you create a website with get-requests, tons of pages, and all that. You can use the following script to make it all work, automatically (again).

Bit.ly shortlink implementation
Adding URL Links to a MySQL database

Bit.ly

Let’s get some bit.ly action going here. First, you need to create an account. Then you need to get the bit.ly API key Next, let’s look at a neat script I found and made a few changes to so you could simply use include() and have a ready function with all the right variables:

// Variables
$bitlylogin = 'loginname';
$apikey = 'long series of numbers that make up your API key';

/* make a URL small */
function make_bitly_url($url,$login,$appkey,$format = 'xml',$version = '2.0.1')
{
 //create the URL
 $bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version='.$version.'&longUrl='.urlencode($url).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$appkey.'&format='.$format;

 //get the url
 //could also use cURL here
 $response = file_get_contents($bitly);

 //parse depending on desired format
 if(strtolower($format) == 'json')
 {
 $json = @json_decode($response,true);
 return $json['results'][$url]['shortUrl'];
 }
 else //xml
 {
 $xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
 return 'http://bit.ly/'.$xml->results->nodeKeyVal->hash;
 }
}

I like to set my function up like this so that I can always interchange values, and so that I will automatically have the right values stored in those two variables above ($bitlylogin and $apikey). You don’t need to do that. You could simply change the function definition like to include defaults:

function make_bitly_url($url,$login = 'loginusername',$appkey = 'long api key',$format = 'xml',$version = '2.0.1')

Now as far as implementation of the script goes, it’s pretty simple:

$url = "Http://www.davepcguy.com";
$shorturl = make_bitly_url($url, $bitlylogin, $apikey);
echo $shorturl;

And you’ll get the short url echoed out. If you use the default value version you can simply do this:

$url = "http://www.davepcguy.com";
$shorturl = make_ibtly_url($url);
echo $shorturl;

You’re done. Easy enough, eh?

MySQL Database

Believe it, or not. It’s actually rather tricky to add a URL into a database. You have to select the correct format in the table, decode and encode stuff. It’s pretty messy and I have not found a good tutorial online on how to do this.
So here goes, let’s assume you use the method above to create short links. It’ll make life much easier, trust me.

First, let’s create a table in your database:

//login variables
$host = 'localhost';
$user = 'username';
$pass = 'password';
$db = 'sample database';

//connect
$connection = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) or die ('Unable to connect!');

//database select
mysql_select_db($db) or die ('Unable to select database!');

//the right query
$query = "CREATE TABLE sample_table
(
id int NOT NULL auto_increment primary key,
name varchar(50) NOT NULL,
email varchar(50) NOT NULL ,
message text NOT NULL,
url varchar(255) NOT NULL
)";

//executing query
$result = mysql_query($query) or die ('Error in Query');

Notice that I used a varchar(255) for the datatype. You could use varchar(55) or any other number. Every shortlink by bit.ly is 20 characters…max. The problem is when you add the information in your database so I recommend a good 255 characters.

Next, you have to make sure you know what you want out of the script. I made a script so that every time my website asked for a row of information, it would automatically add the URL (since I was a bit late with this idea, I had to find a way to add the information without having to recreate the whole database). Also, it’s a good practice to check if the data is present and in case it’s not, add it. Here’s what I did:

//connect

$name = 'sample name';

//query for a particular row with the name
$query = 'SELECT * FROM sample_table WHERE name = $name'';

    // execute query
    $result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query.".mysql_error());

//check if the url column has anything in it
if (empty($row[4])) {

//if it IS empty, let's make a shortlink
$url = make_bitly_url($permalink,$bitlylogin,$apikey,'xml');
//we have to encode the url. I'll explain that
$url = urlencode($url);
//make a query to update (don't forget the quotation marks!)
$query = 'UPDATE quotes SET url = "'.$url.'" WHERE name = '.$name.'';
//execute query
$urlresult = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());
//decode url for later use in the script
$url = urldecode($url);
}

//let's make an else statement in case the information IS present
else {
//let's decode that encoded url
$url = urldecode($row[4]);
}

Now you have the $url variable down! w00t. You can do a bunch of stuff with that. Like implement it in that twitter button I keep talking about. Check out my new site too to see it in action.

Oh about that encoding and decoding. If you try to submit the $url without encoding it, you’ll get an error because the characters “/” and “:” and some of the other ones have a special meaning in SQL. Here’s what the encoded and decoded versions look like:

normal: http://bit.ly/8oQBvB

encoded: http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F8oQBvB

decoded: http://bit.ly/8oQBvB

As you can see, the encoded version uses the “%” characters (ascii) for the coding.

Don’t forget to encode and decode then!

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial
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“Tweet This” and URL shortening API

Admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:00:26 +0000

Alright, you’ve all seen those CRAZY “Tweet This” buttons on so many websites, (mainly wordpress). You may have also noticed that some just send you to twitter and you have to manually input the twitter message. Well, how about we just make a button that will automate all this for us?

I really do love it when I click on that button and twitter pops up with a pre-written message like “Check out this site : URL GOES HERE” or “Crazy CSS tutorial on backgrounds. Check it out: URL GOES HERE”, it makes it much easier for me to share my finds. Here’s a great demo.

Okay, I’m working on a new website and it has various posts on it that I want the readers to be able to automatically share on twitter. I also want to include a backlink so that their twitter followers can visit the actual article. Basically, here’s a tutorial on shortening URLs using API and for creating a twitter button.

URL shortening

As you may know, there are tons of URL shortening services. Most, including bit.ly and tinyurl.com support API services which basically means, you can use PHP (and AJAX) in order to use their services on another server. That’s BASICALLY what it means. I’m not a master of this. Bit.ly requires an account so I won’t be getting into that. I don’t want my account to be spammed with a ton of different links. But, if you want to keep track of how many people clicked and posted your link, you are more than welcome to read a tutorial on it elsewhere.

I’m not too big on tinyurl.com anymore because it requires way too many characters. And for twitter use, it’s basically useless so I browsed around and found to.ly which has really basic API info already posted. Let me copy it real quick:

function CompressURL($url) {

  $ch = curl_init();

  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://to.ly/api.php?longurl=".urlencode($url));
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

  $shorturl = curl_exec ($ch);
  curl_close ($ch);

  return $shorturl;

}

Add this function to your function.php, if you use an external function list (use require() to add it to your site), or just add this function in your header on your site so that whenever you call upon it later, it will be at your disposal. Now, let’s get the URL of the site you’re on. Let’s say you have a dynamic page and don’t feel like manually writing each separate link. We can use the $_SERVER variable for that. A combination actually:

echo "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];

This will echo out the whole URL, including any GET statements you may have entered. If you don’t want those statements, erase the last $_SERVER variable. Okay, so let’s put it all together to shorten the link using the previous function:

$permalink = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
$url = CompressURL ("$permalink");

Now that we have the compressed URL, let’s move on to the tweet button.

Tweet This Button!

Well, go out and find some great twitter icon. Or make your own. It’s easy. You go into photoshop and make a 150 x 50 px rectangle and write twitter in it. That’s not what this tutorial is about.
Twitter has an easy-to-use API (Is it even API?).

http://twitter.com/home?status= MESSAGE GOES HERE

So there goes the message. Very easy, no? Now, here lies the problem. What kind of message do you want? You could use different functions and variables that describe each page on your site. If you set them manually (in the META tag), use this instead so that the description is already stored for later use. In my newest site, I used the actual content of the page (a quote) for the message:

$description = "An article about php scripting and creating a simple tweet this button.";
echo $description

Twitter has a character limit of one forty, right? We can take care of that too. “substr()” is a function that will allow you to cut up your description. It works like this: substr($string, begin cut, end cut). I use a 100 character cut off:


$twittermsg = substr($description, 0, 100);

$twittermsg .= "...more on".$url;

The message is complete. A hundred character message ending with “…more on URL”. Finally, the button and link:

The “onmouseover” and “onmouseout” are used for a nice hover effect (onmouseover will be the hoveved, and onmouseout is the non-hovered). Using CSS would be a literal pain because you’d have to create a clickable div or a span…display none. Well, just trust me, this is MUCH easier.

I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial!

Check out my next tutorial for bit.ly API!

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Google Dashboard?

Admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:25:03 +0000

Ah, so google came out with yet another feature. Some time ago, I talked about the Google Social Search that was in its developmental stage. Well, Google just came out with its new Google Privacy Dashboard. It’s another step for Google to become more transparent and less, mischievous. Read about their Google Privacy effort, it looks like they’re really trying.

The Dashboard, supposedly, contains all the information that google has stored about you, including Google:

blogger information
contacts
friend connect
gmail
IGoogle
Reader
Talk
Voice
Analytics
Adsense
Docs
Calender
your general Account info

Google Dashboard

And loads of other information. This is what my GMAIL statistics looked like (click to full view):

GMAIL

As you can see, it lists how many emails you received, how many in trash, how many you’ve sent, pretty standard info. It also allows you to jump into the Gmail settings on the right. For those of you that use Google Voice. You’ll get similar statistics:

Google Voice

If you’ve ever used your Google account to connect or access other websites, the permissions are also saved:

Google Account

Some of the feature don’t yet work for me, but that maybe because it has only just now launched. The Google Blog entry will explain the features in-depth.

Here’s the video explaining Google Dashboard:

If you have a google account, a youtube account, or a blogger account. Check out the dashboard and see what Google has to say about you.

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Google Social Search

Admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:10:26 +0000

Google Social Search is a new Google feature that seems to be another addition to Google’s long list of diverse services that include AdSense, Blogspot, etc

It’s finally here, or it will be pretty soon. The “Social Search” is basically an extension to google that searches through your friend’s list on variety of social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Okay, now don’t start laughing. Why do I say that? Oh COME ON! FLICKR?! Flickr is owned by Yahoo inc. who is THE competitor to Google Inc. in every way possible. Yahoo teamed up with Microsoft to create bing. Yahoo has its own Ad system, and so does Google with Google Ads.

It’s quite strange to me that Yahoo allows, willingly (or unwillingly?) Google to use Flickr in its social search.

Okay, so what’s Google Social Search?

Basically, whenever you search on Google (and you’re signed in), Google brings up its usual stuff, the webpages, a map maybe, pictures, and perhaps products. Now though, what will also come up will be your and your friends’ tweets, status updates (on facebook), pictures (on flickr) and wherever else. I have to agree, it’s a really nice idea because I don’t have to sift through thousands of tweets to find one exact one (in case I forgot to “favorite” it).

Here are a couple videos explaining the concept:

Here’s the official Google blog

PROBLEMS:

I think this whole concept is a huge problem, why?

This way, google will have access to all your data to cache and store in their databases. They will have even more data they can use for ad targetting by basically accessing your private information. This bit was for you all Google Conpiracists

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