Tag Archives: twitter widget

Adding the NEW twitter follow button and other twitter widgets to your blog

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Just yesterday Twitter launched a new “Follow” button that will make life easier for all of us twitteraholics.

follow

Before now, you had to put a link to your twitter page and then potential fellow tweeters had to click “follow” there. Now, they can do it all from your site with one single click.

He’re an example for my account. Go head – click follow – I won’t mind!


So how do you add one to your blog?

Twitter makes it easy to grab embed code for your own personal follow button here.

We’ll walk you through the steps, but if you want to know more about embedding, you should check out the in-depth post here from our Teacher Challenge blog.

1. Visit the Twitter Resource page for the Follow button

2. Choose from the available options and then copy the code that appears on the right side
twitter

3. Paste the code into the HTML tab of a page or post. A popular place might be to put it on your Contact or About page.

How To Embed In a Sidebar

You can see that we’ve embedded the follow button into the sidebar of this blog on the left side under our photos.

Here’s how to this:

1. Complete steps 1 and 2 from above (which is to go here)

2.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

Appearance > Widgets menu item

3.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

4.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

5.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code for your follow button or widget, click Save and then Close.

Adding HTML embed code to voki

6.  That’s it!

What other twitter widgets can you add?

Using the exact same steps as embedding the follow button, you can also add several other twitter widgets too!

All of the different widgets and options can be found here.

Here are a few on display for you too see:

The Profile Widget




The Search Widget




Edubloggers List Widget



Other Twitter Resources

Introducing The New Plugins on Edublogs!

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Those that follow me on twitter will know that I’ve haven’t been well this week so James has been nice enough to help out by writing this post so all I have to do is add screenshots and extra tips.

It’s Christmas at Edublogs and, in the spirit of the season, Edublogs Supporters will find themselves with a few extra treats wrapped up under the tree.Image of plugin

Specifically there are four new plugins which may well prove popular, just head over to your ‘Plugins’ menu to check them out.

Threaded Comments

First up there’s Threaded Comments, a plugin that does exactly what it says – adds threaded comments to your blog. Why not jump over here and have a play with them, not bad huh!

Below is a screenshot from a threaded comment on yesterday’s post. Threaded comments means you can reply to specific comments = cool!

I’ve switched on threaded comments on The Edublogger so feel free to test them out.

Image of threaded comment

Twitter ToolsImage of twitter tool

Then, there’s the return of Twitter Tools – an immensely powerful Twitter integration plugin that allows you to tweet from your blog and blog from your tweet! If you’re a Twitter fan, it’s got the lot.

Your twitter tool options are:

  1. Send a tweet to your twitter network whenever you write a blog post
  2. Create a blog post from a tweet
  3. Displays your tweets on your blog and post tweets from your blog

However I wouldn’t recommend having both a) Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog? and b) Create a blog post from each of your tweets? set to Yes. If you choose this combination it grabs each tweet and creates separate blog post for each tweet then send a tweet to your twitter network to tell them you’ve created a blog post. I managed to spam my twitter network with 20 instantaneous tweets and was sent to the twitter penalty box.

Image of tweet from blog post

I suggest you stick to “Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog?” as shown in the screenshot below. You can edit your Twitter Tool options using Settings > Twitter Tools.

Image of Twitter Tool

To display tweets on your blog and be able to send tweets from your blog you’ll need to add the Twitter widget to your sidebar (Design > Widgets). If you want to add the Twitters widget you will first need to activate your Widget Pack plugin.

If you look at my left sidebar you will see these widgets how these widgets work.

Image of Twitter widgets

Greet Box

And, in case you happen to also be a Digg/Google/Netvibes/Delicious/StumbleUpon/etc. etc. etc. fan – the new plugin ‘Greet Box’ will allow you to display specific (and rather spiffy) messages to visitors to your site coming from those sources… for example, you could invite a new visitor to subscribe to your RSS feed… or a Digg visitor to Digg your site.

What happens is when a person clicks on a link to one of your posts from any of the services listed they will see a greet box displayed.

Image of the greet box

You can alter the messages in the Greet boxes and choose whether they are displayed above or below your posts by going to Settings > Greet Box.

Snow

Oh, and of course, it being the season for it, there’s also Snow… yep, you want a gentle fall of the seasonal white stuff on your blog, then turn this on and your Xmas wish will be granted!

Check out Local District 4 Instructional Technology News blog to see what snow falling down through your blog header looks like!

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