How to add a Twitter Connect signin button to your blog comment form
Twitter has quietly released Sign in with Twitter which is a neat system allowing websites to access your Twitter account details without you having to give them your password.
I’ve used the Twit Connect plugin from Voice of Tech to implement this on Blogstorm so that all my readers can leave a comment without entering their URL & name. All you have to do is click the button and we can pull your name, avatar & Twitter profile page to go alongside your comment.
First of all you need to register your application with Twitter so they can give you an API key.
Next you need to upgrade your server to PHP 5 because the plugin does’t work with PHP 4.
Finally upload the plugin & follow the instructions below:
- Upload `twitconnect.php` and all included files to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
- Place `<?php if(function_exists(‘twit_connect’)){twit_connect();} ?>` in your comment template or rely on the default `<?php do_action(‘comment_form’, $post->ID); ?>` code.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Modify plugin options through the `Settings` menu
It’s worth noting that this plugin doesn’t allow blog owners to do anything other than pull your public details from Twitter so it’s quite safe for you to use. Personally I think it would be nice to give readers the option to automatically tweet a link to the comment they have left.
Please try it out using the comment form below & let me know what you think.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 21 comments below, or add your own!
Surprised they haven’t made to much fan fare over this as it rivals Facebook connect for me, seen it about the blogosphere once or twice.
I love this plugin, what do you think?
Testing plugin… lets see.
Nice, but where’s the OpenId support, why have Twitter not got on board
this is totally awesome!
Nice little plugin to rival the Facebook and Google Connect.
Cool idea, I use ASP so this plug in wouldn’t be much use – but worth looking into and maybe developing my own… good one
Nice…
This is neat. One thing I noticed though is that once logged in using Twitter, the logout button doesn’t seem to work. I’m getting a try again message.
Cool! Thanks for the heads up.
Wow gotta test this
Interesting. Thanks for sharing this. I haven’t heard much about this.
Si. Yo soy testing.
Testing out this plugin. Looks awesome so far.
Hmmm, when I try to sign in with Twitter via the button here above, Twitter said:
“This feature is temporarily disabled.”
Twitter has temporarily taken Oauth down to fix some bugs it seems. The problem is on all services not just Blogstorm.
great article!!! 10 of 10 for sure.
very good thanks for your help
Cool! Thanks for sharing.
Mind if I suggest something? I’m also using Plurk, and I like it better than Twitter.
-Melanie
-Sell Anything Like Crazy
What about a check box to post the comment to twitter or a link to the post?
Is there any way i can add this pluggin into my html page? can anyone please gimme the code…
thanks