October 3, 2009 Introduction
No one can deny the power of Twitter as a social and marketing tool, more and more people are finding ways to use it to promote themselves, their sites and their businesses. There are a number of tools to help bloggers promote their site by automatically tweeting post titles and links to their timeline but if they have no followers, who is going to see them?
If you could help people get more followers and increase your own blog traffic and reader loyalty at the same time, wouldn’t that be a great thing?
The Problem For Mu Blog Admins
Adding an extra field to the comment form isn’t too hard, adding it to every themes comment form is! especially if you provide a large number of different themes for your users to choose from. And, some of your users might not want Twitter integration for their particular blog (not everyone is Twitter mad).
The Solution
I proudly present TwitterLink Comments. A user configurable plugin for blog owners that will add an extra field to the comment form allowing users who comment to add their Twitter username and then display it along with the comment, all without editing a single template file or function call.
How It Works
You have a choice of adding the field to the comments.php template or let the plugin do it automatically for you along with a message that you can configure in the settings page. The comment author only needs to put in their Twitter username once and every comment from them on the whole site will display a link to follow them.
The field description, link position, format and action can be configured by the blog owner in the settings page including any extra html, classes and text that they desire.
Features
- Completely automatic, no configuring required.
- Any HTML is filtered through kses using a custom array of allowed tags.
- Set the link as nofollow and open in a new window
- Fully compatible with Mu and Multi-db plugin.
- Twitter link is shown on all comments for a user as long as they comment at least once with their username.
- Localization support
- Italian translation included
Installation
WordPress MU and WordPress
- Upload the whole TwitterLink-Comments folder to the regular plugins directory and activate it.
- Check the settings page in the dashboard and choose the description message and position/format/action of the follow link
- Save the settings and check a single post as a user or logged out to see it working.
Download
You can download TwitterLink Comments at the WordPress Plugin Repository
(or search for TwitterLink-Comments in your plugin browser located in your dashboard)
Requirements
The plugin can run on WordPress and WordPress Mu at least version 2.8.
Notes
If you are adding the field for the Twitter id to your comments.php template file, you need to make sure that it has name=”atf_twitter_id” and that you configure the settings page to not automatically add the field (first option).
The plugin adds a table to the database called {prefix}wptwitipid (ie. wp_wptwitipid). The table is removed if the user deletes the plugin using the delete link on the plugin page once it has been deactivated.
All inputs are validated and any HTML is passed through kses using a limited set of HTML tags so there should be no worries for Mu owners about their users using code that they shouldn’t
Credits
Code, design and support : Andy Bailey http://comluv.com
Italian translation and localization testing : Gianni http://gidibao.net
Arabic translation : Firas http://www.webli.st/
finally :)
wp 2.8? how about 2.7? I must update my wp.. thanks Mr. Andy!
if you’re on 2.7 you must update to 2.8 due to the security improvements so I don’t feel so bad about requiring the plugin to use the latest version of wordpress. Besides, I don’t have any 2.7 versions online to test any more because of the vulnerability. hope you find the plugin useful!
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Well.. I’ve been written in Indonesian language about this great plugin! and update my wp too :) and it work!! Wait for a few hours until this plugin spread on google.co.id (indonesian region). Maybe. I’m the 1st person who installed this plugin in Indonesia :lol: You know why? because, now, in Indonesia at 4 a.m. Other bloggers must be sleep now :D
Thanks!
Uber cool Fiddy – thanks for the submission!
71mm0: thanks for being the 1st Indonesian and thanks for spreading the word.
James: thanks for the opportunity!
very nice plugin! thanks!
Hi Andy,
We need to know if the field will be retroactively added to existing comments. Some of us are already using a Twitter Field plugin and we won’t want two fields but we also won’t want to lose all the Twitter IDs that are already in that plugin.
When we installed it the Twitter IDs would “automagically” appear in all previous comments as soon as a commentator added it in a new one. Does your field work that way too? Thanks.
This plugin will add the follow link to every comment made by the same author as long as they add their twitter username at least once on one comment. If you were using wp-twitip-id before this plugin, it will use the same database table and so all existing commentators that added their twitter username will continue to have a follow link along with their comments.
Great plugin, I’ve been looking for something similar to this.
Why aren’t you using it on your blog? :-)
Thanks.
- jens -
This is awesome! Any chance for a Blogger version?
jens: this isn’t my blog! this is the wpmu.org blog where you can find out about all things to do with the Multi-user version of WordPress.
The plugin is my entry to the 2009 contest.
Capreek: no plans to make this for blogger, sorry! (but you can get it on a free wordpress blog at http://comluv.com and import your blogger posts to that) :-)
Andy: sorry about that, this is the first time I am visiting this blog. My guess is that your plugin will do great in the contest.
- jens -
This is a great plugin. Is it enabled by default when activated? I ask because I would like to use plugin commander to activate it by default for everyone however I would let my members decide on their own whether they want to use it by enabling it in the settings instead of enabling it by default.
Definitely going to give it a try, thanks!
Igor
kunal: if you enable the plugin site-wide then it will show the box and field on every blog. A user will have to deactivate the plugin to stop it showing the box.
Nice post. Thank you.
Brilliant, I’ll install that soon.
Hello just thought i would tell you something.. This is twice now i’ve landed on your blog in the last 3 weeks looking for completely unrelated things. Spooky or what?