It wasn’t so much a holiday treat this time (as with my other plugin developments), more a couple of weekend ‘hobbyist’ coding sessions, but here it is, TwitterPad.
TwitterPad is a WordPress plugin which allows twitter users to collect tweets using custom search strings. The results are automatically added to user specified pages.
Click here to download TwitterPad
Description
TwitterPad is an automatic RSS-to-page plugin designed to integrate with twitter. This plugin allows the user to add a number of custom search strings from search.twitter.com specifying which page (or a new post) new tweets should be added to.
For example, using ‘from:{yourtwittername} #tp’ you can collect all of your tweets which have been tagged #tp. You are also not just limited to collecting your own tweets, any search string will work.
The plugin was designed to automatically collect tweets I wanted to save for future reference (a tweet pad) and the page you collect tweets to doesn’t have to be public. The plugin allows you to update any page in your blog, even if it is private.
Tweets are collected once a day the newest appears to the top of the page. Here is an example of TwitterPad in use.
NEW – TwitterPad v1.3.1 now has the option of manipulating twitter RSS feeds with other services like Yahoo Pipes.
NEW – TwitterPad v1.3 now has the option of digesting tweets as a new post.
If you have any feature requests either add as a comment or tweet using #twpadreq (results collected on this page using TwitterPad ;-)
The screenshot below shows the div class tags generated by the plugin, which you can use to control the layout using custom css. For example, on my own site I include .twPadItm { height:60px;}.
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Martin
Any way to automate the refresh versus having to do it from the admin panel? Much like http://github.com/elektronaut/jquery.livetwitter
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In version 1.0 the feeds were automatically refreshed every 24 hours. Just pushed out version 1.1 which allows you to control the frequency to every : 1h, 4h, 12h or 24h
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Martin
Do you have sample style used in your demo? My stream is a bit messed up. :)
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Hi Scot – I’ve added a screenshot outlining the styling blocks genterated by the plugin. The only additional styling I added to my blog template was .twPadItm { height:60px;}
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Can you limit posts per page?
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I chose not to limit the number because the original idea behind the plugin was to archive tweets (mainly your personal ones). If you are looking to archive higher volumes there are other web services for that, and if you are looking to display a twitter timeline there are other plugins which do that.
Relative timestamps are a good idea. I can work that into the next version.
Thanks for your suggestions,
Martin
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hi
When you will release this plugin for Latest WordPress
Aka 2.8.6 or upcoming 2.9 ..
Please let me know
Alok
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@Alok – okay ;)
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Martin –
Tried to activate into 2.8.6. No joy. Crash reported at line 171 (not sure what that means).
I would love a way collect all my Tweets for a weekly post on my blog. I’ve had no luck with TwitterTools. That developer seems frustrated with mounting complaints over problems. I’ve given up on it.
Hope you’ll come up with a solution for this need as well. There are many who want to post a weekly digest.
Thx. Syl
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Just upgraded to WP2.8.6 and seems to be fine? I have some time off coming up so I can look at this again. Like the idea of a weekly digest post so will incorporate it as part of the update.
Martin
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I was able to install on WP 2.8.6, but got a similar line 171 error when it first tried to update. Tried deleting the plugin and reinstalling, but reinstalling reported a crash.
Really liked it while it worked though :) Hopefully you can get it sorted out
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Running version 2.9. Deactivated plugin, removed saved options, reinstalled and all worked fine. Looking at line 171 and can’t see what the problem is. If someone could send the full error code that would be great.
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Also, in terms of feature requests – a good one would be to limit the number of tweets stored. For the purposes of space, at some point the number of tweets shown are just too many!
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New version 1.3 out. Some minor updates plus option to digest tweets as new post. Any problems let me know.
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Hello and thanks for your TwitterPad plugin!
How can I filter the @replies so as they won’t show up in the digest post? — I’d like to keep the tweets having @username mentions, though…
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@Lionel made a small update to the plugin [v1.3.1] which now allows twitter feeds to first be manipulated by Yahoo Pipes (the updated version includes a link to a pipe I’ve created which filters out @replies ;)
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@Martin Hey, thanks! :-)
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Hi Martin, we used twitterpad on our blog for several days, but It recently crashed our webpage! I had to delete the plugin. Here are the circumstances.
I noticed it was creating several drafts, between 5-7 draft posts. Yesterday afternoon I had tried to log in my site and got a database error message. I figured it was twitterpad since it was the only new thing we had installed. Deleting it restored my website.
Any ideas? We’d love to keep using it if possible. Why does it publish multiple drafts for the same day?
Thanks in advance for our help. I’m willing to reinstall the plugin if it helps diagnose any problems. Here is the last posting on our webpage if you are curious how we are using it. We aggregate posts with hashtag #DSN for news about the Deep Sea. http://deepseanews.com/2010/01/summary-of-tweets-for-january-26th-2010-8/
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New update v1.3.3 to fix problem identified by @kevin Z (plus improved styling). Thanks kevin Z for identifying this and helping with debugging!
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just for info, installing this plugin seems to break SourcedFrom. Other than that, works beautifully. Once I deactivate Twitterpad, SourcedFrom starts to work again.
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Hi J Martin – I think it is something to do with a conflict with an extension application used by both plugins called simplepie. You can get TwitterPad and SourcedForm to work together by commenting out lines 34 and 35 of twpad.php like this:
// if(! class_exists('SimplePie'))// require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/simplepie.php');
Martin
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Fantastic! That worked perfectly, thank you SO much!!
One very happy Twitterpad user here :)
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You post design is one of the best I’ve seen. Nice work! Is there any chance you will be adding the possibility of a weekly digest for this plugin? Daily posts are a bit much in the context of my content.
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Hi Per – In the New Post Template section of the settings if you just tick one day this should post a weekly digest
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I’ve been experimenting around with TwitterPad to archive Twitter streams from my class’s backchannel. Right now I have it configured to update a single page every four hours. It works well for a day or two, and then suddenly all of the tweets disappear. I visit the page and nothing’s there. If I run “reset” the page will repopulate, though only with the most recent tweets. I lose the earlier ones I had there. Any ideas?
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Hi Mark – before the page goes blank are there lots of tweets?
Martin
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Yes – dozens and dozens of tweets. But now the page is empty: http://samplereality.com/gmu/451/engh451-twitter-stream-v-2/
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More than this http://mashe.hawksey.info/rsc-mashe-twitter-referrals/? (the code looks for a div tag if it’s not there thinks it starting a new archive overwitting the page with it’s template. If the page is too big it might not detect the tag).
A more stable way to do this might be to use my Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet then embed the spreadsheet in the page. I’ve also got something that converts a spreadsheet of status update urls into a formatted page. If you are also feeling brave I could help you set something up to automatically monitor the sentiment of the tweets
Martin
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(I should add that this is a WordPress 3.2.1 multi-site installation.)
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Realy wounderfull plugin if not the best i have seen so far specialy the yahoo pipe option make it very dynamic and adaptable. The only minus i see so far is that all tweets get into one singel page /post. It would be more interesting to archive singel tweets in a singel post. did i miss something or would it need some line of codes more ? Thanks a lot for all your gorugous posts and shares.
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Hi – that option isn’t in the plugin. Not planning any more development on this plugin but because Twitter search results can be extracted using rss feeds you might try another plugin (like feedwordpress)
Martin
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