Tweeple

FAQ

Installation Instructions

1. Upload tweeple folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Go to Tools > Tweeple to setup your Twitter API authentication and mange your Twitter feeds.

NOTE: This plugin does NOT require a theme with Theme Blvd framework. This is a plugin for all tweeple!

Usage

Once you’ve setup your Twitter API authentication settings (see FAQ), and created a Twitter feed, there are two ways to display a Twitter feed on the frontend of your website.

1. Shortcode: You can use the [tweeple_feed] shortcode like this: [tweeple_feed id="123"]
2. Widget: From Appearance > Widgets, use the “Tweeple Twitter Feed” widget in one of your sidebars.

What are “Authentication” settings?

This is sort of a pain, but as of June 2013, in order to access Twitter API from your website, you need to setup credentials with Twitter. The general concept is that you’ll need to create what Twitter calls a “developer application.”

Think of your WordPress website as the “application” — Once you have these credentials setup for your site, you’ll have full access to use Tweeple to pull from Twitter API.

How do I setup the “Authentication” settings?

After installing Tweeple, in your WordPress admin, go to Tools > Tweeple > Authentication and you’ll find your Twitter API application settings.

To create your “application,” login to Twitter, and go to: https://dev.twitter.com/apps

Create an application, and then create a user token for that application.

After you’re done, you’ll need to put in the following information to Tweeple at WP Admin > Tools > Tweeple > Authentication:

• API key — formerly “Consumer key”
• API secret — formerly “Consumer secret”
• Access token
• Access secret

Does it matter what account I setup my Twitter developer application under?

Nope. The Twitter account you create your developer application with doesn’t really matter. Once you have your authorization credentials setup, you’ll be able to use Tweeple to pull tweets from any public Twitter account, list, or search.

I posted to Twitter, but it’s not showing up on my website right away. What gives?

This is because of caching. Tweeple stores the information retrieved from Twitter in your WordPress database for a certain amount of time, before going back to Twitter to update the information.

Why does Tweeple use caching?

In the process of pulling from Twitter API for your website, caching is crucial. It is a big process for your web server to go out and pull from Twitter. So, you don’t want Tweeple pulling from Twitter every time someone visits your website.

Additionally, Twitter API has rate limits. So, in theory, if you had consistent traffic coming to your website and your server could handle pulling from Twitter on every page load without exploding, Twitter API would keep cutting your server’s IP address off.

Can I manually clear a Twitter feed’s cache?

Yup! Let’s say you’ve just posted a breaking Tweet that’s really important and you want your website visitors to see it right away. —

Just go to WP Admin > Tools > Tweeple > Twitter Feeds and click the button to clear a specific Twitter feed’s cache. After this, the next visitor to your website will trigger Tweeple to go out to Twitter and pull the latest tweets to be stored in the cache again.

Also note that any time you update a Twitter feed’s settings, the feed’s cache is cleared automatically.

Can I change how long Twitter feeds are cached for?

Yup. When editing any Twitter feed at WP Admin > Tools > Tweeple, you can change the cache time seconds under “Performance.”

Our recommended, and default, setting for this is 7200 seconds (i.e. 2 hours).

Note: We have safeguard implemented that does not allow you to set this less than 60 seconds. If you’re a developer and you know what you’re doing, you can change this limit with the filter “tweeple_cache_time_minimum”.