WP-to-Twitter

A useful plugin to integrate your WordPress blog with Twitter is called WP-to-Twitter and is available for free from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory

The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts automatically a Twitter status update from your blog whenever you add a new post. URLs can be shortened using a variety of services; the focus is on services which provide statistics for the link. Available shorteners are Cli.gs, Bit.ly, Yourls, and WordPress.

The plugin can send a default message for updating or editing posts or pages, but also allows you to write a custom Tweet for your post which says whatever you want. If you have multiple blogs in different niches it would be advisable to create separate Twitter account for the different niches and integrate each WordPress blog with the corresponding Twitter accounts.

WP-to-Twitter Installation

The plugin is installed and activated as most other plugins as follows:

Upload the `wp-to-twitter` folder to your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory

Activate the plugin using the `Plugins` menu in WordPress

You can easily download the plugin from the Install Plugins WordPress option. You can use the search facility and then select the Install Now option.

After the activation you should go to the settings option, optionally adjust the default settings and provide your OAuth integration keys. The process to set up OAuth authentication for your web site is needlessly laborious. However, this is the method available and we describe how to set it up,

OAuth Authentication Settings

First you need to register this site as an application on Twitter’s application registration page, You should sign in to the Twitter Developers site with the username and password of the Twitter account that you want to use and then enter the details requested to create an application.

It is especially important to enter the correct url in the Website and Callback url fields. They should both contain the url of your blog.  It is important to define the application as Read and Write and you should therefore change the default setting of the application.

You should then tick your agreement with the Rules, enter the Captcha codes and press the Create Your Twitter Application button. If everything was correct you will see a message that the application has been created and you will see your application’s OAuth settings. You will need to copy the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.

You should then press the Create my Access Token button and you will receive an Access Token key and an Access Token Secret.

Once you have these data, you should copy into the WP-to-Twitter settings the following data:

  • Twitter Consumer Key
  • Twitter Consumer Secret
  • Access Token
  • Access Token Secret

You can then press the Connect to Twitter button and, if the data were correct, you should receive a message WP to Twitter is now connected with Twitter.

Conclusions

The WordPress to Twitter integration is a useful addition to your blog because it will allow to make your postings noticed and to be listed in Google. You could do that manually, but the addition of the WP-to-Twitter plugin will insure that all your postings will be mentioned in Twitter without further efforts.