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10 Useful Twitter Plugins for Wordpress that Work!

Nikole — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:26:24 +0000

It seems like there are a million Twitter plugins and widgets for Wordpress, but many are outdated, no longer updated, don’t work in Wordpress 2.9.x, or are just plain useless. To help you separate the wheat from the chaff, I’ve compiled this list of ten useful plugins and widget to get your Twitter account playing nicely with your WordPress blog.

Twitter for Wordpress
This plugin can be coded into your theme or used as a widget. It is a very simple plugin that offers customizable CSS for styling.
TweetMeme
TweetMeme easily allows your blog post or page to be retweeted. It provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter, and is a very popular plugin for large brands like TechCrunch and Mashable. The tweets are tracked at TweetMeme.com.
Lifestream for Wordpress
Obviously this plugin does a lot more than a twitter feed, but it offers several key advanced features like the use of custom themes for feed display.
Tweetroll / Tweeple
These tools give you customizable widgets to show your recent tweets, list your followers, and other stats. There is also an option to monetize your tweets.
TweetSuite
TweetSuite offers a whole host of features like tweet tracking, most tweeted, and retweets.
Twitter Widget Pro
Twitter Widget Pro properly handles and displays your Twitter feed in your blog’s sidebar.
Tweet Stats
Tweet Stats utilizes the TweetBacks plugin (above) to display "Most Tweeted" and "Recently Tweeted" widgets on your blog.
Tweet This
Tweet This adds "Tweet This" icons to your posts, shortens the post URLs, and automatically tweets new posts. Note: This plugin may or may not work in Wordpress 2.9 — there have been mixed reviews on using it with the latest WordPress release. I’ve gotten it to work, but your mileage may vary.
Tweetable
Tweetable turns your Wordpress admin into a Twitter client with status updates, URL shorteners, and the ability to tweet your posts as they are published.
TwitterCounter
TwitterCounter allows you to easily integrate and customize TwitterCounter.com followers and stats widgets for your sidebar.

Good luck and happy developing!

Nikole Gipps is a punctilious web developer, marketing-minded writer, enthusiastic gardener, improvisational cook, loving wife, and fun mother of two. Read more about her work at That PHP Girl or follow all of her adventures at the nhgnikole mashup.

“Small Changes” and Theme Purchases

Nikole — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:29:05 +0000

I helped a friend out with some small changes to his site recently, Selling the Startup, and it reminded me what happens when a "quick fix" turns into a major problem. Sometimes themes can be a gamble—just like purchasing the services of any web company—so it is important to check out reviews and references before signing your name on the line. I’ve had great luck with all of the Woo Themes I have used so far, but there are a lot of people out there making Wordpress themes for purchase now. I don’t like to pick on anyone, but it just gets to be a problem when a theme is blocking the display of a user-installed plugin or widget, forcing me to redo the CSS or change the code to make it work. This is just frustrating for me as a developer, and frustrating to a client who has to pay for a simple modification that turns out to be anything but simple.

Of course, if you do get stuck, I’m always here to help. And Mark, go ahead and tweet your heart out now.

ThatPHPGirl.com Update

Nikole — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:24:27 +0000

I upgraded the site to Wordpress v2.8.2 and Woo Themes Over Easy in Blue v2.0.2. What I thought was going to be a quick upgrade turned into a bit of a project, but I am happy with the overall results. The new version of the Over Easy theme has more robust framework and better options in the admin panel. (The base theme demo can be found here.

Customizations made to the base them include:

Adjusted the CSS for the div columns for the front page slider to allow for more text and less image space at a 300px height slider.
Removed the image resizer and link from the front page image. Swapped out the Woo Themes image function for get_post_custom_values($key) to pull the correct image.
Took out subscription widget and added my own sidebar links to the blog using the Woo Themes Hand-drawn Icon Set.
Removed date-based archives in blog sidebar for a recent posts widget.
Added hard link to Portfolio category of the blog into the header; changed exsiting code to highlight Portfolio instead of Blog when the user was in the Portfolio category of the blog.
Creation of a custom contact form and response thank you page.
Added Read More, Testimonial, and Recent Posts widgets to the bottom of the front page.
Removed footer/widgets from the blog (for now).