You may or may not know that I’m the developer of a Twitter plugin for WordPress, called ThinkTwit – this very easily allows you to add your tweets to your blog, which can make it very easy for someone to see your thoughts in one place and is also a great marketing tool to have on your corporate website. There are hundreds of tools out there that do this, but few are as flexible as mine.
Not many people are aware of ThinkTwit, and those that do find it could easily think that it’s just for developers, so I thought I’d post a blog on how to use it to show how easy it is to use – and generally to help people who want a quality, reliable tool that is easy to install now but can be very easily expanded further down the line.
To install and configure ThinkTwit just follow these very simple steps:
- Navigate to https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new and login using your standard Twitter credentials
- Complete the form:
- Name: ThinkTwit – [site name]
- Description: ThinkTwit plugin
- Website: [url of your website]
- Callback URL: [url of your website]
- Make a note of your “Consumer key” and “Consumer secret”
- Navigate to “Plugins” within your WordPress Admin account and click Add New
- Enter “ThinkTwit” and click “Search Plugins”
- You should see the first result is ThinkTwit – click “Install Now” and agree to the prompt
- Click Activate Plugin
- Mouse over “Settings” in the main menu and then select “ThinkTwit”
- Enter your “Consumer key” and “Consumer secret” which you previously noted, then click “Save Changes”
- Mouse over to “Appearance” in the main menu and then select “Widgets”
- Copy “ThinkTwit” in to your desired widget location and then select “Save”
- Now expand “General Settings” and replace “stephenpickett” with your Twitter username and click “Save”
That’s all it takes! Once you’ve gotten this far I suggest you take a look at the installation instructions and the FAQ to find out a little more about the other options within the widget, how you can edit the CSS and how you can include ThinkTwit where other widgets can’t go – additionally, I will post some further tutorials on how you can utilise the other options that ThinkTwit makes available for advanced users and some instructions on how developers can carry out some more clever tricks.
As usual, if anyone has any feedback on ThinkTwit or requires any further features they will be gladly accepted and I would be more than happy to help!