Twitter Blackbird Pie WordPress Plugin

UPDATE : check out the new Blackbird Pie plugin page

UPDATE (15 Nov 2010) : Released version 0.3.4. Plugin added to WordPress.com sites – read blog post.

UPDATE (11 Sep 2010) : Released version 0.3 – “blackbird” button in the visual editor – read blog post.

UPDATE : Updated to version 0.2.5 – non-English tweets now supported – read more here.

You might have heard about a cool new online Twitter tool called Blackbird Pie. If not, then this is the simple explanation :

Twitter Blackbird Pie allows you to generate and embed HTML code that represents a tweet.

Or a graphical explanation might be better :

There already have been a few posts on the subject, and even a Chrome plugin, but here is the first plugin!

Features

• Exact same look and feel as the respective Twitter profile.
• Allows for multiple “pies” in a single post (as seen in the examples below).
• Stores the generated HTML tweet JSON data in a custom field (if possible), so the Twitter API is only called the first time.
• Slightly better styling than the original Blackbird Pie
  • Better use of the Twitter profile background image and color and tiling.
  • Uses the Twitter profile text color.
  • Uses the Twitter profile link color.
• Uses the jQuery Time Ago plugin to display a “real time” datetime of when the tweet was tweeted. As of ver 0.2.1 a php function has replaced the need to rely on the Time Ago plugin (so no javascript is added anymore!)
• Auto-linking of URLs, hashtags, usernames within the tweet text (This script was used)
• Use either the id or full URL of the tweet.

Examples

[blackbirdpie id="13794126295"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/themergency/status/13968912427"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/MarcForrest/status/14153926000"]

Known Issues

• The Twitter API seems to intermittently return a bad response. If this occurs, then obviously nothing is stored in a custom field and, instead, a simple message is displayed.
• There seems to be a property missing from the Twitter API. If you choose to have NO background image, then the API still returns the default image. There is no property to tell you if the image is disabled. More can be read about the issue here (including a simple workaround).

Please Try

Please download the plugin and give it a go and let us know what you think.