Here's the link to TwitterPing: http://dhodgkin.elementfx.com/wiki/index.php?title=TwitterPing

Has anyone tried out TwitterPing yet? I need some feedback on it.

I haven't tried it because I don't really understand/appreciate/value the twitter thing, but I can give you some (very generic) feedback if you're interested...

Package it in a folder with a readme.html file. No one wants to just guess, and based on my stats tab I can safely say many people do read readme files.

Make all your text strings translatable. For example of these three lines, only one will translate if someone were to translate your plugin:

$this->long_desc = $this->T_('Sends out a tweet with a tinyurl to your latest blog post.');
$this->ping_service_name = 'Twitter Ping';
$this->ping_service_note = T_('Sends out a tweet with a tinyurl to your latest blog post.');

For plugins you need to use $this->T_('translate me') if you want translation to happen. Oh and that is another reason to package the file in a folder. Not only can you add a helpful readme file, but you can add a locales folder and a messages.pot file just in case someone wants to translate it to their preferred language.

Make it have per-user params without global defaults. Per-blog is (a) not very possible within the plugin framework and (b) not really appropriate for this particular type of thing. The post author is the one who's twitter credentials need to be known by the plugin. So those params should be user specific. I think to do that all you need is to change GetDefaultSettings to GetUserSettings ... but I could be wrong on that. Oh and if you want to be really weird about it you could have a global value that is also user-settable to convenience the single author blogs out there and the multiuser blogs. Heck you could even make it so that The Admin decides if each user will have to set their own values or everyone uses the values for "the installation's twitter account". I like settings. Lots of settings!

By the way it looks pretty straightforward - like I don't see why it wouldn't do what you want it to do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all it does is send the value for twitterping_update_text to twitter as a tweet (which I think means that is the text that twitter will show)? I guess I could set up a twitter account, figure out what that is all about, unblock tinyurl from my antispam mechanisms, put your plugin in a folder, upload it and install it, then post something to see if it actually works. Problem is I hardly post stuff anymore unless I write a new plugin. Or hack.

EdB thanks for the input, I highly appreciate it.

I am actually thinking of giving it Pownce, Plurk and Jaiku support too. Though Jaiku support would require each user to know their Jaiku API key. Which basically works like a hashed password.

As far as Twitter goes even if you don't "tweet" a lot the usefulness of TwitterPing, or even Twitterlution for that matter, is that they ping a HIGHLY read microblog. Twitter, Pownce, Plurk and Jaiku are widely used by 10's of thousands of users on a daily basis, at a level of one post per user every minute, and with your account on any of these being worldwide at that level means extreme exposure to your blog. And b2evo for that matter.

The advantage is most Twitter users send and receive their "tweets" via SMS, so even if they are out and about they still receive the ping from your blog. Which leads me into another idea: sending the ping not just to twitters global feed, but send it to a list of users via a comma separated list ie. @user1,@user2,@user3. This would allow a more personal ping setup, as you would of course only use this feature to send the ping to friends.

Later

I'd be very interested in seeing support for other services. Right now I'm using the original Twitter plugin, which works fine for me in 2.4. To "ping" other services, I have my blog email Ping.fm. It's not perfect, but it works.

@cslepage, what other service would you like to see in TwitterPing? If I get enough requests I'll add what I can.

@Edb, I also plan on fixing the localization problem you were talking about. I just quickly rushed out a dev release to get feedback on it. So localization being the first major thing to fix it's priority on my list of fixes.

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

There's also the configuration options, I was thinking of having a set of options for the site admin that would allow the admin to allow or disallow certain features in TwitterPing ie. Allowing it to ping Twitter, and not Jaiku. I will move user credentials to the user options for the plugin, thus allowing each user to ping the services of choice also. The list of services to ping will be determined by the site admin of course. Thus cutting down on bandwidth usage in large multi-user blogs.

Here's what Ping.fm supports right now:

Bebo
Blogger
Facebook
hi5
Jaiku
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Mashable
MySpace
Plurk
Pownce
Tumblr
Twitter
Xanga

Of those, I'd say, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Xanga... Oh why not, all of them. :)

@cslepage I'll see what I can do.. as of right now it's just me working on the plugin so it may be slow going for a lil while, while I get all the API info I need to support what you listed.

Is this plugin still in dev ?
I want to update my twitter account with the title of new posts.

Do you know how can I ping ping.fm ?

Unfortunately I have not had the time to invest into adding any other features since I released the 0.1-dev version. And I lost the source due to a HDD crash some time ago.

I have decided to re-open TwitterPing and rewrite it from the ground up. First order after getting Twitter working is Ping.fm.

If you'd like to help contact me either by email at dracul [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter at dracul01.

Damien

Hi Damien,

If you want help please ask questions. That's easier for (many of) us. And make sourcecode available. ;)
I'm telling you because I don't know if you need help getting started writing plugins or you want advise about certain Twitter API items.

Good luck

Hi Afwas,

I won't need help getting started as I already had a working plugin. I just was unfortunate enough to lose the source.

What I may need help with is adding other services like ping.fm.