New WordPress Plugin: Twitter Friendly Links
May 2nd, 2009So, you promote your blog posts via Twitter, huh? Me too. And those long blog post URLs, ugh! Yeah, we got rid of those using URL shortening services like TinyURL and tr.im but what about the name and/or brand? Your blog posts might be fab – very interesting to read and three thousand comments on each. But are you getting people to remember your website address in Twitter? No. Do you get backlinks from Twitter using TinyURL? No. Can you measure site statistics from TinyURL links on Twitter? No.
You Gotta Think Before You Link
I’ve been inspired by a blog post (jeez I can’t remember where I read it, I’ll add the link as soon as I do) about the importance of posting nice links into Twitter. So I decided to create a plugin for WordPress, that would allow you to have your own TinyURL within your domain name. Here’s a quick example:
http://kovshenin.com/wordpress/plugins/twitter-friendly-links/
Might look like this in Twitter:
http://kovshenin.com/712
Which will take you to the page above with a simple redirect. I called the plugin Twitter Friendly Links. The go part of the address is customizable (dunno why I picked “go”, it may be “to” or just “g” for go or “p” for post – any way you like it). The TinyURL link (http://tinyurl.com/c9wpdc) is currently 1 symbol shorter, but it IS very ugly, isn’t it?
Also, there are some URL shortening services that open up the desired link in a stupid frame with stupid ads. What if TinyURL decide to make some money on ads? My suggestion: move on to your own domain. Oh and what if you have a very long domain that doesn’t fit into 140 characters in Twitter? Unlucky! ;)
Here’s the plugin page: Twitter Friendly Links
Please don’t forget that I am in the middle of the development process, so don’t shout at the first couple of betas, okay? And gimme feedback on anything that comes into your head. Also, stay tuned for the next release this week. If everything goes as expected you will have an options page in your wordpress administration as well as short links to copy to clipboard for every post.
Cheers!
Related posts:
- WordPress: Twitter Friendly Links Plugin. Stage Two
- Twitter Friendly Links Video: Live at WordPress.tv!
- Twitter Friendly Links: Now In Alphanumeric Mode
- Video: Twitter Friendly Links for WordPress
Tagged: links, plugins, social media, twitter, wordpress
Shortlink: http://kovshenin.com/710
Thats what I am looking for. Great work. But – Does it work also with Twitpress by Tom Purnell?
Hey David, thanks. I did it compatible with Twitter Tools by Alex King. Haven’t looked at Twitpress yet. I will though ;)
Hi David, the latest version seems to have an error…
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\blog\wp-content\plugins\twitter-friendly-links\twitter-friendly-links.php on line 346
I’m using Wordpress 2.7 and the TweetMeme plugin… any help?
Hey Mike, you should try downloading the plugin one more time, cause the latest (0.3.3) seems to work fine here :)
Thanks for the reply, I downloaded again as suggested and also deactivated TweetMeme for good measure but still get the same error when I try to activate
unexpected $end in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\blog\wp-content\plugins\twitter-friendly-links\twitter-friendly-links.php on line 346
I also amended the code so that it parses but it still fails to activate… very odd
What php version are you using Mike? Try to modify the source of twitter-friendly-links.php and add a closing php tag:
?>PHP Version 5.2.6
Closing tag fails to fix as well…
Hmm.. Strange. Mike, try to download a prior to 0.3.3 version, for example 0.3.2 from this list http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-friendly-links/download/ and let me know how it goes.
Thanks.
Same problem all the way down to version 0.3, there’s obviously an issue with some changes that have been made to a few standard wordpress files. I don’t have time to debug that today though :-(
Yup, probably… Anyway, good luck solving it :)
I get the same error as Mike got… :-/
WP/php versions. Did you do any core changes to WP? What plugins are you using?
I fixed the error
php.ini settings were causing it, you’ll have to mess around with it to find the right one for your system but that’s what fixed it for me.
Hey Mike. Glad you sorted it out =)