Twitter integration with WordPress

So I spent yesterday afternoon finding ways to integrate twitter with this blog. I found some undeniably rad plugins for anybody who is a fan of WordPress and twitter. I knew the basic functionality I wanted, so it was just a matter of finding the plugins to accomplish the tasks.

First, I wanted to display some of my recent tweets on the sidebar. Now, grabbing a twitter feed is pretty easy. But I was feeling lazy and I figured somebody else had already done the work, so I might as well take advantage of that – after all, I know I could do it if i wanted to. I found this little gem called Tweet Blender (by Kirill Novitchenko). The beauty of this plugin is that you can define multiple twitter sources, so you aren’t limited to a single feed. For example, my sidebar is set to display tweets from me (mrlyndon) or tweets with #bradleykenyon in them. If I ever want/need to change that – it is a simple adjustment in the settings panel in the admin section (ease of use is why I chose WordPress, after all). There are also quite a few other display options with the plugin.

After that, I set my sights a little higher. Gravatar’s are neat. But if you don’t what the previous sentence is about, you’re not alone. Gravatars (standing for globally recognized avatar) are just what they sound like. If you have one and comment on a blog somewhere with gravatars enabled, your avatar/icon will show by your comment. It seems to me that a lot of blogging community is set up with gravatars, but they really are not as universal as they would like to be. However, at the rate Twitter is expanding, it’s hard to ignore. I found a plugin called Twit Connect (by Shannon Whitley) that allows you to login with your Twitter account when you comment on this blog. Long story short – it’ll display your Twitter icon next to your comments. If you don’t have a Twitter account (who are you?), it’ll look for your gravatar. And if that fails, hello default image.

A quick note about Twit Connect – I had some trouble getting it to work on the live site. It apparently competes with the plugin, Google Analytics for WordPress (by Joost de Valk). I ended up with a different analytics plug, as there are plenty of those and surprisingly few plugins (at this point) for twitter icons on comments.

Next Twitter feature: a retweet button on each post with a pre-shortened url.