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Remember that this is still beta, and the first time you view a page that has TweetBacks installed on it, the script will take a moment to load, subsequent views of the page will be fast. If you’ve installed TweetBacks on your blog, please leave your URL in a comment. I’d love to see how it looks out in the wild.
To install, just copy and paste this JavaScript into your template/theme where you want your TweetBacks to appear:
<script src="http://danzarrella.com/tb.js?stats=true"></script>
I’ve just released a TweetBacks WordPress Plugin.
I’ve been listening to what people have said about TweetBacks and have implemented a few new features in response to the great feedback I’ve gotten.
First up are the 6 new configuration options I’ve added, allowing users to customize how TweetBacks are displayed on their blogs.
New Configuration Options:
- Option to display only the number of TweetBacks (countonly=true)
- Option to limit the max number of TweetBacks shown (max=10)
- Option to hide user avatars (noavatars=true)
- Ability to hide TweetBacks from certain users (blockedusers=user1+user2)
- Switch to turn off all styling other than avatar (nostyle=true)
- Switch to turn off the title (notitle=true)
You can use these configuration options by including them in the URL you use to call my TweetBacks javascript in your template like this (they can go in any order and you block as many users as you want):
<script src="http://danzarrella.com/tb.js?noavatars=true&countonly=true&max=10&blockedusers=user1+user2&nostyle=true¬itle=true&stats=true"></script>
TweetStats (statistics about TweetBacks of your content).
Additionally, I began building a system to report stats on TweetBacks. The first feature is a list of the most Tweeted posts on your site (you can see it in action in my side bar under “Most Tweeted”), it works like this:
<script src="http://danzarrella.com/tsjs.php?max=5"></script>
Just copy and paste that code into the sidebar of your template. You can change the styling of the list is displays via CSS:
div#mostTweeted {
font-size:12px;
}
In order to take advantage of this, you have to turn on the “stats” feature in TweetBacks by appending stats=true to your TweetBack script as seen above. By default the sidebar script will use the contents of the page’s <title> tag as the link text, but you can customize this by proving the TweetBack script with a title parameter. Wordpress users can easily use code like this:
<script src="http://danzarrella.com/tb.js?noavatars=true&countonly=true&max=10&blockedusers=user1+user2&stats=true&title=<?php urlencode(the_title()); ?>"></script>
This script has one option so far: the maximum number of posts to show. By default it will show 5.
I also added and changed a few things users had requested, as well as fixed a couple of bugs that had been affecting some sites:
Changes & Additions:
- Removed the link to the specific tweet’s URL
- Added the date the tweet was posted on
- Added support for tr.im
Bug Fixes:
- Total TweetBacks number matches actual number of tweets
- is.gd and bit.ly support is now functional
Future plans include integration with my ReTweet mapping system. Over 70% of all ReTweets contain a link, meaning the majority of them are actually TweetBacks. By using my TweetBacks script, you’ll be able to track (and map) the spread of your content through Twitter through normal TweetBacks as well as ReTweets.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Dan, great additions to your Tweetbacks, especially the Most Tweeted. I am still not showing the bit.ly tweets and I am having a few issues with the Most Tweeted, it’s not showing up in my sidebar yet. Probably some error on my part. I can’t wait to get it all up and running.
Great tool, thanks!
January 8th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
@bridget I didn’t see the most tweeted code in your sidebar, where should i be looking?
January 8th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Thanks for the nostyle addition! I am updating my post now.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Peeps.
I’ve written a downloadable version of Dan’s brilliant idea, called TweetBackRedux that works on PHP enabled servers.
http://assets.mindcomet.net/jeremyhilton/
Please note a few things about this version.
* It caches URL shortener api calls for efficiency
* There is only support for TinyURL, Bit.ly, and is.gd.
* The Twitter search API is not case sensitive. URL shorteners are. This version removes invalid tweetbacks that makes their way into results due to this difference.
Installation instructions are contained with the source as well as my Twitter handle. Hit me up with any questions, I’ll do my best to answer, but can’t guarantee that I will.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Suggestion - make the avatars and name linkable to their Twitter account? Is that possible (I would assume so?)
I tended to click on them thinking ‘ooh I want to see more’ and was disappointed.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
How soon until you write an *official* WP Plugin ?
January 8th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Very soon it seems! Thanks!
It has the same problem as Brian’s though - namely look at:
http://www.mutantpop.net/radioclash/ (someone has tweeted my homepage URL, perfectly normal behaviour - but look! Multiple tweetbacks on every post…)
Great way to spam people’s pages no? LOL. Can we switch it ‘off’ on the homepage then?
January 8th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Hi, I’ve installed it on my blog: http://taliacarbis.com, not sure if it looks how it’s meant to?!?!?! But I’m sure this’ll be cool anyway.
Also really want that ‘tweet this’ button you have at the bottom of posts…
Thanks for the plug-in!
January 8th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Would it be possible to get the date for tweets wrapped in span tags? That way I can style them differently from the tweet bodies (for example, make them even smaller, or italicize them, etc).
Anyway, I’m now working on a Drupal module for this.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:32 am
The Tweetbacks module for Drupal is now live on my website, and available for download by other Drupal users at http://coldacid.net/blog/2009/01/08/tweetbacks-let-twitter-host-your-blogs-comments
January 9th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Now all I have to do is wait for lots of Tweets on my blogposts! Cheers. Nice idea.
January 9th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Dan, great work, this is pretty awesome. One thing though, it does seem to slow down my page load time pretty substantially. Have you heard this at all?
January 9th, 2009 at 10:39 am
To save you bandwidth, (and user’s pageload times) can we make a local copy of the tb.js file?
January 9th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Congrats for your work.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Working perfectly on my blogger-based blog. Got me thinking, if Tweetbacks can find and thread related tweets and if it can add a form, it can replace other comment systems quite nicely. Since comments are Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect’s killer app, it could have very interesting implications for the online identity race. Twitter could become the new OpenID.
January 9th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I’m not sure what I did wrong but I can’t see the widgets even thought I downloaded and activated it?
January 10th, 2009 at 2:11 am
this doesn’t work with intensedebate, does it?
January 10th, 2009 at 3:37 am
tweetbacks works great, looks good and lotsa fun keep ssmilin
January 11th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Well, I’ve been working on adding this to my blog at http://www.the-deblog.com — which is on TypePad. I have a few questions:
1. Does the date have its own style, so that we could change its color with CSS? Likewise, does the avatar have a style so we can change its right margin?
2. I put the stats on my left sidebar. But while my two test tweetbacks show up, two also show up for a post that doesn’t have any tweetbacks. So, I’m not sure what’s happening there.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Oh, and one other question: after the date and time it has +0000. Is there some way to get rid of that?
Thanks!
January 12th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Debra: Checking the HTML generated on coldacid.net, it appears that the date isn’t wrapped in a or anything, so styling may be out of the question. This is with default styling on. Using nostyle=true might wrap the date/time in a but I might be wrong about that.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Thanks, Chris. I see that Dan’s got the date in green above, but he’s probably using his widget rather than the simple script I’m using.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Thanks! I just installed tweetBacks on my blog and I love it. I was looking for a way to easily integrate my blog with twitter and you gave it to me
January 28th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I’m here to celebrate “Thank A Plugin Developer Day”, as decreed by Wordpress. Thank you, Dan!
March 5th, 2009 at 10:47 am
It would be nice to be able to give it the name of a div where it could put the result, so that we can load it at the end of the page source.
March 31st, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for nice piece of scriptwork
Works fine for me.
(”Be the first to Tweet this blogpost! http://sometinyurl.com” pointing to twitter.com/status=just read this blogpost:))
I just would love, instead of “no tweetbacks yet”, a possibility to Tweet the URL, just with a text link, no button, because it doesn’t fit my design
March 31st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Hm, I forgot: some people use TwitThis(.com) to Tweet a URL, can you implement those URL’s as well?