Not a developer? Go to MovableType.com

Plugin and Theme Directory

MT-Twitter v4.1.0.1

By Brandon Fuller
Posted August 21, 2007, in Social Media.

Details

Heard of Twitter? Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website or 3rd party applications.

While I think Twitter is an interesting concept, I don't like spreading my posts all over the place. You might be posting on your blog, on Twitter, on MySpace, etc. I want all my content to ultimately be on my blog but I don't mind it being in other places too.

So I decided to do a 1-way sync with Twitter to Movable Type. That way I can use Twitter when I want to, but my Movable Type blog will be updated with all the content in the background.

Using the background tasks functionality in Movable Type, this plugin will query your Twitter account for your latest updates, or "tweets". When it sees a new one, it will create an entry in your blog for that tweet. Various properties of the blog entry are used. The title isn't really interesting because tweets don't have titles. The body of the entry is the text of the tweet. A direct URL to the tweet on Twitter.com is put into the extended entry field. In the end, you have tweets appearing on your blog so your non-Twitter friends can see what you are up to just by reading your blog.

I could have used a separate database for the tweets, but I decided it was cooler and more integrated to use normal blog entries. Then you can use a variety of Movable Type template tweaks to show/hide the tweets or customize their display.

Compatibility

Movable Type versions: 4.3


Back