WordPress Wednesdays: Putting Twitter on Your Blog

Published on Jul 30, 2008   //  WordPress

They say that Twitter is a microblogging platform and it can serve as an excellent source of traffic to your blog. If you follow BlueFur or Michael Kwan, you’ll be able to keep up to date with our latest blog posts, as well as connect with us on a very casual basis. But what about going the other way? How can you get your blog readers to follow you on Twitter?

You may have noticed that Twitter has an integration tool that lets you automatically post your Twitter updates on your website or blog. In order to add this widget, you’ll want to follow these steps.

1. Log into your Twitter account at Twitter.com.

2. Click on Settings near the top of the page.

3. About halfway through the Account Settings page, you’ll see a link that says, “You can also add Twitter to your site here.” Click on that.

4. This sends you to the Badges page. Select “Other” for blog integration. If you have an account with Blogger or Typepad, you can use those options too.

5. After choosing Other, you’ll be presented with three choices: Flash, Just Me; Flash, With Friends; and HTML/Javascript. The third one is fully customizable through CSS and is likely the most desirable.

6. Choose the number of updates to be displayed at a time, as well as the heading (if any) for the section. You will likely be embedding this code in your header, sidebar, or footer, depending on your blog design.

7. Copy the provided HTML code and paste it into your blog theme template. That’s it!

This is a fairly simple process and it will ensure that visitors to your blog are also aware of the “micro updates” that you provide through Twitter. If they like your blog posts, they’ll probably enjoy your tweets as well.

3 Comments to “WordPress Wednesdays: Putting Twitter on Your Blog”

  • Hey Bluefur – I’ve been meaning to comment for a while, but haven’t gotten around to it.
    Thanks for the easy to do WordPress tips!
    I’ll definitely be referring some people to these pages on your site soon.

  • hi bluefur… when i refresh my URL, only the twitter logo comes out. why can’t i see my twitter feeds? ;__; i downloaded the flash…

  • Maybe it doesn’t work on wordpress.com?