Auto tweet your blog post

twitter birdFor today’s hack let me say for the record that I am into automation.  I hate doing boring things over and over.  Once I’ve done something once, it should be a macro and I should just be able to invoke the macro.  Like brushing my teeth….. um…. never mind, let’s not go there.    With all the Twitter clients out there someone should have written one to inform Twitter whenever you update a blog post.  Why should I have to manually tweet whenever I update my blog? In an earlier post I stated why I’m not that big a fan of Twitter as a social medium to begin with.

Should one even tweet about blog updates in the first place? Opinions vary, so I’ll spout mine. I would much rather hear about a blog update from one of the people I’ve elected to follow on Twitter, rather than hear their latest “I have a headache today.” Why? Because the people I follow tend to put a little thought into their blog posts. If my followers don’t like my auto tweets they can cease following me. I’m not after setting any records in number of followers. I’d rather have folks who are interested in what I have to say.

OK…. Googling starts…..

nightmareOh NO! Not an un-updated plugin! First thing I located was auto-tweet plugin for wordpress.  But it only lists that it’s compatible up to version 2.3.3.   Ummmmm….. given that it alters the database, I’ll give that a pass until it’s certified for  2.5.1.

Next thing I found was pingtwitter. According to pingtwitter, if you include their trackback when you publish a new post it will automatically tweet it. They even thoughtfully generate your trackback url for you in the form of
http://www.pingtwitter.com/pingme.php?u=your_Twitter_username&p=your__twitter_password&l=your_location

Pingtwitter provide a  manual test page — In other words you can just strong arm the blog permalink and other blog info to see if it works.    I’m going to manually tell it to tweet my credit card security post, because that is meant to be a pillar post.  Hmmm…. I’m not so sure I want my twitter password flying around unencrypted on the open internet but I’ll give it a shot. Woot! I just tweeted without tweeting. It doesn’t make it clear that it’s a blog update but not really a biggie. It also seems to tweet a little promo for pingtwitter. The autotweet looks like this in twitter:
tixrus Credit card security online: What you should know @ http://tinyurl.com/4tgnu2 - Accessible explanation of credit card security on less than 20 seconds ago from web

Cool, now for the acid test.  Tags ready, categories selected, pingtwitter in the trackback field……  All systems go.   Here goes nothing!


I’m baa-aack!  Woot! It worked.    Here is what popped up on Twitter:
tixrus Auto tweet your blog post @ http://tinyurl.com/4d3awa - An experiment with pingtwitter. I will blog about it and see if it does an

The next automation task, of course, is to get WordPress to automatically put that trackback in every post.


I’m back again. I may have been the last person on the planet to discover it, but Twitterfeed does exactly what you want. No wonder the plugin was not updated. It was supplanted. Even the author of pingtwitter says he uses Twitterfeed. The thing about twitterfeed is you need to have an openid to log into it, so if you don’t know what that is, read my openid article to learn how to get one FREE. I had some technical difficulty with twitterfeed. Both the feed and the twitter credentials validated but when it actually tried to send the update to twitter it said that there was an incorrect password. I don’t know what Mario did, but after I chatted with him it started working. When you do the update, you have your choice of how you want to scrunch the URL. You can use TinyURL or you can use Tweetburner which produces a different kind of tiny URL called a twURL. The advantage to using Tweetburner is that you can track and see how many people clicked in from Twitter.

And a third option: Twittertools plugin for WordPress. Twittertools seems like overkill to me. I want to tweet when I blog, but it seems like if I also blog every tweet we could get into an infinite circle. You can elect to have your tweets aggregated into a daily digest. Don’t worry I’m not going to inflict that on you!

Thanks for reading and be sure and comment. I got the Comment Luv going, and Hot Dorkage is a dofollow blog as of today, so you’ll get some free GoogleJuice if you do.

26 comments to Auto tweet your blog post

  • […] plurk at the same time.  However I think twitter is  a waste of time anyway and other than the wordpress autotweeting whenever I update my blog I hardly ever use it.   Perhaps someone will write a wordpress plugin to wrap around […]

  • Hey thanks for sharing your research! I just started Googling, looking int this same thing, and I’m sure I would have followed the same trail you did, except that you gave it to me all in five minutes!

    I’m off to setup Twitterfeed…Cheers!

    Jonathan Boettchers last blog post..5 Niche Markets for a Recession

  • […] thinking, yeah, Twitterfeed is great because it tweets on my behalf through the back end (here is a prior post on how to do twitterfeed), but it would be nicer if my readers (all eight of you diehards I love you!!!) could easily tweet […]

  • Hiya, i have seen your site when searching a few weeks ago and i really love the design! I just bought a new 3 character domain (cost me a packet) for a niche review blog, and i was wondering if your design is a free or paid one? I’m new to WordPress and about to set it up, and i would really like to get something with a similar look to yours. Any ideas where i could download or buy something similar? Thanks for your help! 🙂

  • admin

    Free theme: Tigopedia. It’s a bit old fashioned but I hate changing themes as I have a lot of custom tweaks to it.

  • Auto tweet is most use full Auto Tweet does not verify your login information. It tries to use. Auto Tweet uses regular expressions to convert links to a Twitter-friendly format.

  • it seems a really coo thing. im going try it

  • Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. 🙂 Cheers! Sandra. R.

  • “If my followers don’t like my auto tweets they can cease following me.” Nuff said. What do these people really think that they’ll find n 140 characters, the next great novel? Crab crab and then crab some more. Keep it light, keep it fun and keep it coming!

    Pingtwitter seems to want a lot of good blog space for a more tweet. Blog posts are more valuable than those ‘through away’ tweets. I personally use twitter tools and then send my posts to my own profile.

  • Car insurance claims >> http://onlinecarinsuranceclaims.com/

    […]dorkage.net is other nice source of advice. Online Car insurance claims […]

  • It is nice to know about auto tweets i want explore this topic more by searching more information.

  • It’s very useful post. I modify this idea and now on me tweet channel are presented the latest RSS from my website. I hope I will have more followers and visitors on my site:)

  • Thanks for the tip. I was feeding my twitter account thru Hootsuite, then they decided to downgrade everyone who wasn’t willing to pay their exorbitant prices. Thanks again.

  • Colleen

    Yah, I hadn’t originally gotten on the bandwagon with Hootsuite, and I wanted to do some stuff and I saw all these rave references to it, but by the time I got there I felt like someone who arrived too late at the party, all the booze was gone.

  • Hey there!

    The interesting name of a site – dorkage.net, category this is good too.
    Memory foam mattress is a sort of mattress that’s created from polyurethane.
    Besides polyurethane, it is usually made out of different types of chemicals.
    The chemical substances which can be added to the mattress foams gives it the ability to increase in density. Memory foam mattress is also known as visco elastic polyurethane foam.
    The mattress was developed in an effort to meet the demand of the mattress shoppers.

    Memory foam was originally developed by NASA to ease the strain of utmost G-forces during area shuttle take off.
    However, it was by no means used within the area program. The preliminary memory foam, often called T-foam, gave off too much obnoxious gasoline for it for use in a closed atmosphere, reminiscent of a bedroom.
    T-foam also wasn’t very sturdy – it would often compress or crack over time.

    For super memory foam products – http://www.memoryfoams.org
    See you!

  • salve . here you can find a lot of good infos. [url=http://day-trading.cc]daytrading site[/url] .

  • The mobile equivelent to this site is http://gay.pornhub4u.com, They too have thousands of free, full length movies that stream perfectly to your iphone or palm pre

  • Stop hack the program!!!

  • I was thinking the other day that there obligated to be a through with a view my kids to business at digs what they learn in class. Then it hit me – songs!! On a melody going honest and ball-shaped in their heads and they’ll not at all taking it!
    The stew is that most English songs have too onerous and oft not exceptionally usable lyrics. So I absolute to write a long story an eye to each of my English games, using [url=http://sieucongnghe.com]quang cao google[/url] only the language tolerant of in distinction! This is the primary “How are you?

  • I really like your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you create this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz reply as I’m looking to design my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from. many thanks

  • zeorf
    [url=http://mith.umd.edu/tile/forums/profile.php?id=159]ritalin[/url] rcl
    [url=http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/forums/member/72903/]buy yasmin birth control[/url] sob
    zbnjqiv

  • Please tell me if I should be posting in this category. I am known as James. Things I like building muscle I found this awesome site about [url=http://facebookversion.insanejournal.com/369.html]income infuser bonus[/url]. I’ll be checking out more of dorkage.net

  • . Hello There. I found your blog using msn. This is a very well written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and come back to read more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I will definitely return.Regards posicionamiento web

  • Producing a Cd albums plus Dvd disks brand would be the least complicated career. They allow this wherever and whenever you want if you possess hottest name maker software. It’ll be the very best option for all your own Disc collections when you can establish your own one of a kind labeling for anyone your own Compact discs in addition to Dvd videos, to help you to find the right Compact disk around the moment research.

  • thank you for your sharing. [url=http://www.brazil.cc]brazil news tour travel hotel carnival[/url] [url=http://www.underground.cc]underground[/url] – Ëó÷øèé äîõîä.

  • That helped me a lot! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again!

A sample text widget

Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.

Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan. Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem, suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.