Simple Twitter Tweets

A Simple Twitter Tweets display widget, using Twitter OAth and API v1.1 and backup up so it always displays your Tweets.

Why?

Our clients, especially on shared hosting were having issues with the Twitter API not displaying their tweets, too many connections from the same source (host). We solved that issue, then lo and behold Twitter changed their API so displaying your own Tweets required OAuth authentication and finally we buckled and decided to roll our own so it would be simple for them, for us and for you.

Twitter changed their API again. Removing version 1.0 of the API altogether and by forcing version 1.1 of the API and use of the OAuth authentication requirement. We wrote this plugin so everyone could have it at a click of a button.

There are a few Twitter plugins out their, but we couldn’t find one simple enough, or that worked (to be honest) and so the Simple Twitter Tweets plugin was born.

Twitter users who want to display their Tweets on their website (or within an application) have to create a Twitter Application to get access to the required “Keys” and “Tokens” Twitter provides for Authentication. The instructions for this are provided below so you can be up and running with Tweets on your site in less time than it takes to make a cup of Tea.

Features

• Simple setup
• Twitter API v1.1 compliant (OAuth Ready)
• No passwords required or used
• Works even when Twitters down, over capacity or not connecting
• Tweets stored in the database with each call, so if your call to the Twitter API fails for whatever reason there won’t be a blank space or Oops message on your site, you’ll just see the last set of Tweets the system stored – sweet huh.
• Tweeted when? – In Human Time using minutes, hours and days (i.e. 5 hours ago) or using Twitter time display (i.e. 5h)
• Twitter intents – increase social interaction with users ability to Reply, Retweet and Favourite your tweets right from you page
• Twitter intents using bespoke (only three characters) icon font (tiny) and colour the icons right in the widget
• Did we say it was simple and works…