Twitter Blackbird Pie WordPress Plugin Version 0.3 Released

UPDATE : check out the new Blackbird Pie plugin page

I have finally had the chance to finish off the changes I wanted to get into the next release of the Twitter Blackbird Pie WordPress Plugin. It is now at version 0.3. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, the plugin allows you to embed a tweet into you posts or pages with a simple shortcode. Check out the demo page to see how awesome the “pies” look!

So what was lacking?

Well, thanks to some awesome review posts, a few shortcomings have been pointed out. There was an issue with using the full URL of the tweet and this has now been sorted out. The other issue the review pointed out was the fact that “tweets have a built in shelf life”. Now this may be true, but because the plugin saves and stores the tweet data in a custom field, even if twitter had to die and go offline for good, the tweet would still be shown and be useful to readers. I also did some major testing with very old tweets and as you can see below, here is the first one ever tweeted:

What has been added?

1. The best feature in this release is the tinyMCE editor “blackbird” button:
   
2. Added support for oEmbed, so you can embed your tweets just by pasting the tweet URL on it’s own line. Read more about the WP feature. Thanks Viperbond007.
3. Changed the custom fields that store the tweet data to be hidden (prefix a custom field with an underscore to hide them). To view these “hidden” custom fields you can always use this tip (again from Viperbond007).

So WTF does this “Blackbird” button do anyways?

It allows for a very easy and user-friendly way to create the shortcode needed to embed the tweet. When you click the button you will see a small popup with 3 tabs, and I think It’s quite obvious what each tab is for:

The first is where you can paste the full URL of the tweet you want to embed.

On the 2nd tab, you just need the tweet ID or identifier (this unqiue key for each tweet that is on the end of the full URL).

The 3rd tab allows you to search a twitter user’s timeline.

Enter in a username and click “search” and another popup will show with the latest tweets for that user. There is also a simple paging mechanism to go back and forward between pages of tweets. A search for the “themergency” username results in this:

Just click the tweet to automatically create the shortcode and embed it into the post. It’s almost too simple now.

So please go and download the plugin and test it out. And please leave a comment here if you find any issues or bugs.

Please also consider donating as a lot of time and effort goes into developing these plugins.

Happy tweeting!