Twitter has become a useful flow of updating information - an alternative headline source from an RSS feed. How do you incorporate such a flow into your web site?

There are Javascript widgets which you can incorporate into your page, available from twitter (so much less prone to spec change than a third party tool), via http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets.

If you want to try one of these out ... go to that link and then link on to "My Website", and you'll be off and experimenting.

Here's an example underway - and remember that you can use # and @ tagging and other advanced search options (there's a useful link from the experiment page that list out the available options) if you don't simply one to follow one tweeter.


Then grab the code and incorporate it into your site. It will look something like this:

<script src="http://widgets.twimg.com/j/2/widget.js"></script>
 
<script> new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'search', search: '#wiltshire',
  interval: 6000, title: '', subject: 'What\'s happening in Wilts?', width: 250,
  height: 300, theme: {
    shell: { background: '#8ec1da', color: '#ffffff' },
    tweets: { background: '#ffffff', color: '#444444', links: '#1985b5' }
  },
  features: { scrollbar: false, loop: true, live: true, hashtags: true,
    timestamp: true, avatars: true, toptweets: true, behavior: 'default'
  }
}).render().start(); </script>

The Twitter folks have done it very nicely - the separate script download hides all the complicated stuff, and the stuff that's spelled out within your page is clearly understandable parameters that you can easily deal with.

I've added feeds for the Melksham Chamber of Commerce on to their front page - see www.melkshamchanber.org.uk - both the Chamber's own tweets, and a "Happening in Melksham" feed. Do take a look ... I'm thinking that having both may be a bit over the top, and you may see just one of them if you visit after the next Chamber meeting on 22nd March 2011.

If you want to include a tailorable Twitter feed on your site, we'll show you how on our PHP Techniques Course.
(written 2011-02-27, updated 2011-03-04)

 H307 - PHP - Web2 and caching
  [1633] Changing a screen saver from a web page (PHP, Perl, OSX) - (2008-05-06)
  [1647] Exchange Rates - PHP with your prices in your users currency - (2008-05-19)
  [1733] memcached - overview, installation, example of use in PHP - (2008-08-02)
  [1812] Starting Ajax - easy example of browser calling up server data - (2008-09-27)
  [1813] Ajax - going Asyncronous and what it means - (2008-09-28)
  [1814] Javascript/HTML example, dynamic server monitor - (2008-09-28)
  [1926] Flash (client) to PHP (server) - example - (2008-12-06)
  [1995] Automated server heartbeat and health check - (2009-01-16)
  [2196] New Example - cacheing results in PHP for faster loading - (2009-05-24)
  [2321] Uploading and Downloading files - changing names (Perl and PHP) - (2009-08-04)
  [2545] Scraping content for your own page via PHP - (2009-12-21)
  [3029] PHP data sources - other web servers, large data flows, and the client (browser) - (2010-11-04)
  [3094] Setting your user_agent in PHP - telling back servers who you are - (2010-12-18)
  [3458] On this day ... one PHP script with three uses - (2011-09-26)
  [3955] Building up from a small PHP setup to an enterprise one - (2012-12-16)
  [3999] Handling failures / absences of your backend server nicely - (2013-02-08)
  [4055] Using web services to access you data - JSON and RESTful services - (2013-03-29)
  [4075] Further recent PHP examples - (2013-04-28)
  [4106] Web server efficiency - saving repetition through caches - (2013-05-30)
  [4136] How do I post automatically from a PHP script to my Twitter account? - (2013-07-10)
  [4627] Caching results in an object for efficiency - avoiding re-calculation - (2016-01-20)

G905 - Well House Consultants - Blogging and Blog Administration
  [1] First Jottings - (2004-08-05)
  [6] Blog v Forum - (2004-08-07)
  [18] Wanted: More hours in the day - (2004-08-18)
  [141] Too technical? - (2004-12-05)
  [145] A comment on comments - (2004-12-09)
  [177] Blogs come of age - (2005-01-14)
  [185] Who am I? - (2005-01-21)
  [204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
  [231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
  [245] I'm not blogging it - (2005-03-14)
  [359] Chicken soup without the religion - (2005-06-26)
  [390] Moderating wiki, blog, and forum contributions - (2005-07-26)
  [405] Horse's Mouth is a year old - (2005-08-07)
  [410] Reading a news or blog feed (RSS) in your PHP page - (2005-08-12)
  [425] Caching an XML feed - (2005-08-26)
  [508] Comment, please! - (2005-11-28)
  [671] Both ends of the animal - (2006-04-05)
  [876] Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance - (2006-09-23)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [1077] In answer to 'am I glad I started a blog' ... - (2007-02-12)
  [1203] A Fresh horse - (2007-05-24)
  [1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
  [2000] 2000th article - Remember the background and basics - (2009-01-18)
  [2192] Copy writing - allowing for the cut - (2009-05-21)
  [2449] Four aspects - Chamber, Transport, Courses and Hotel - (2009-10-11)
  [2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
  [2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05)
  [2751] Going off at a tangent, for a ramble - (2010-05-04)
  [2823] Where have all the bloggers gone? - (2010-06-24)
  [3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
  [3163] Twitter - the special use of @ # and http: in tweets - (2011-02-09)
  [3208] Links for social media, microblogs and business networking - (2011-03-20)
  [3514] Microblogging - what I should have tweeted in the last 48 hours - (2011-11-10)
  [3759] The five oldest blogs and the horses mouth - (2012-06-09)
  [4000] 9 years, and 4000 articles on - (2013-02-09)
  [4121] Has your Twitter feed stopped working? Switching to their new API - (2013-06-23)
  [4292] The Horse is back! - (2014-09-15)
  [4568] Moderation - and the tendency to over-moderate - (2015-11-02)
  [4714] The technical article feed continues - personal updates more proactive on Facebook now! - (2016-10-30)

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