Want to know how to add a nice, scrolling twitter feed to your website’s widget area? This plugin does the job nicely. We show you how to install it and explain it’s features.We developed a nice plugin for WordPress, Joomla! and Magento, which allows you to add your twitter feed to your website. This uses the new Twitter API, so it works great. The plugins are used on thousands of websites worldwide.
This article will only cover the WordPress install, but the other CMS options are similar. If you would like a separate article explaining how to install it onto your cms just let me know.
There are 2 options, you can purchase the pro version, currently $14.95, or you can download the free version. The different is that the pro version offers a sliding/scrolling feature, as well as other features, such as tab option, which displays the scrolling feed inside a small tab on the left or right of your screen. This is great if you want to save space. However, if you are on a tight budget and can’t afford the $14.95, then you can download the free version, which works just as well, but lacks the features just mentioned.
- Choose either the free or paid plugin and download it to your computer.
- Open your WordPress admin
- Turn off any caching software, such as Super Cache
- Select the “Plugins” tab on the left navigation of your admin
- Click on “Add New”
- Select the tab “Upload”
- Find the file you just downloaded and upload it, and activate it.
- Go into your widgets area, which is under Appearance >> Widgets
- Drag the “Any User Twitter Feed” widget into the side panel widget area for your theme.
- Open the widget and you will notice that it can be configured within the widget itself, it looks similar to this:
Instructions
Notice that there is a link at the top that reads “Show/hide instructions how to set the widget options”. Be sure to read that first.
Then you have the consumer key, this is explained in the documentation, so read that and it will show you how to get the twitter credentials required to connected to the Twitter API. Note that it’s required now, so any Twitter apps needs to use it.
The widget settings in the pro version have a few more options. The widget title is simply the title of your widget.
Widget Type, you can choose either Timeline, or search. Timeline is the standard, but if you enter search you can search for specific keywords for your feed. If you use timeline you can enter the username of several feeds and display them all.
The link search title, allows you to link the search title to the feed item.
Tweet number
You can select the number of tweets to be shown in your feed at one time.
Module Appearance
Width and Height
You can choose a width in pixels, that you want to use, but it’s usually best to leave this blank, then it will adjust to your theme’s widget area width. Same applies with the height.
Show Header
This just allows you to either show the header of your widget or not. To see what it looks like you can just turn this on and off and see which one you like.
Show Twitter icon
Again, this is something you can check in both yes and no options and see which one you like best.
Color Options
You can select the colors you want to use, so it matches your theme perfectly. Simply click on the color and a box will open with a selector, so you can choose which color you want for each part.
Tweet Appearance
Display username
Choose if you want to show the username of the twitter account.
Sliding
This is a very important option, it will allow you to turn the static feed into a great looking, slider, that shows your twitter feed as a sliding panel. It really saves a lot of space and looks great. To use it, simply select “Yes”.
Sliding Speed
The default is set to 500 milliseconds, you can change this to whatever fits your needs.
Slider Transition Speed
This sets how long the slide will pause before it moves to the next. If you combine this with slider speed you can get it exactly like you want it.
Tweet Display in Slide
This will determine how many tweets are shown at one time, within the slider. This will also determine the height of your widget, so if you want a small area then choose 1, if you want a large area, just select how many and this will adjust the height.
Tab
Tab and slide options are both only in the pro version. The tab option will put the entier widget into a nice tab on the left or right side or your website. When you hover over the tab it slides out and you can see your twitter feed inside.
Tab Position From Top
This allows you to move the tab up or down from the top of your website. Enter the number in pixels. You can play around with this until it’s exactly where you want it to be.
Select jQuery Code
This is a great, built in option that will save you if you run into any conflicts. If you find that this plugin is conflicting with another plugin that uses jQuery, you can simply select one of 5 code options, until one works. This usually works for almost all conflicts. The final options listed are very self explanatory, you simply select if you want to display avatars, timestamps, re-tweet link, favorite link and if you want to link to the developer.
If you want to purchase this plugin you can get it directly from our main website, here are the links for all options:
For the free version for WordPress: Any User Twitter Feed Free Version
For the pro version for WordPress: Any User Twitter Feed Pro
For the Free version for Joomla!: WDS Twitter Widget
For the Pro version for Joomla!: WDS Twitter Widget Pro
For the Pro version for Magento: WDS Twitter Widget Pro for Magento
