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Widget

To use the widget, simply visit the Widgets page and drag the "Twitter Images" widget into a sidebar and configure it.

Shortcode

Shortcodes are snippets of text that can be inserted into pages and posts. These snippets are replaced by various generated content. Twitter Image Host provides a 'twitter-images' shortcode to display images you have uploaded within a page/post.

Available parameters:

  count                    Number of items to display
  id                       Single ID (eg 'abcde') of one image to display, or multiple IDs separated by commas (abcde,fghij)
  view                     Image thumbnail view: squares, proportional, large or custom
  custom_thumbnail_width   Custom width for thumbnails, when 'view' is 'custom'
  custom_thumbnail_height  Custom width for thumbnails, when 'view' is 'custom'
  custom_thumbnail_crop    Whether to crop custom thumbnails
  author                   Comma-separated list of Twitter account names to limit results to
  columns                  Number of columns of images to display 
  lightbox                 'true' to use Lightbox/Thickbox

Example:

  [twitter-images columns=4 lightbox="true"]

PHP function

As well as the shortcode, you can also use call twitter_image_host_images() from within a template to produce the same output. Pass the same arguments as the shortcode as associative array values:

  <h3>Recently submitted images</h3>
  <?php twitter_image_host_images(array('author' => 'ATastyPixel', 'columns' => 6, 'lightbox' => true)); ?>

Tip: Use this in the twitter-image-host.php template (see 'Creating a Single Template', below) to display other posted images when viewing an image. Use the_twitter_image_author() to filter the list, to show only other submissions by the same Twitter account as the one of the currently displayed image.

Template Tags

This plugin provides several template tags, for use both in displaying single posts (see 'Creating a Single Template'), and for custom pages which display many posts in a loop (see 'Using Template Tags in a Loop').

The available template tags are:

Single Entry Tags

the_twitter_image_permalink

Returns the URL to the view page

the_twitter_image_url

Returns the full URL to the image, or the image thumbnail if the original image was large

the_twitter_full_image_url

Returns the URL to the full-sized image, if one exists, or false otherwise

the_twitter_image_title

The title of the image

the_twitter_image_date

The date (timestamp) of the image - use date() to configure the display

the_twitter_image_author

The associated Twitter account

the_twitter_image

Returns HTML to display the image and a link to the full-sized image if it exists, with Lightbox rel tags.

Loop Tags

query_twitter_images

Search for Twitter images

Available parameters (passed as associative array):

 count                    Number of items to display
 id                       Single ID (eg 'abcde') of one image to display, or multiple IDs separated by commas (abcde,fghij)
 author                   Comma-separated list of Twitter account names to limit results to

has_twitter_images

Use with loop: Determine if there are more images

next_twitter_image

Use with loop: Get the next image

Creating a Single Template

By default, this plugin will use the standard post template ('single.php'). However, if you wish, you can create a custom template to display hosted images. The template should be called 'twitter-image-host.php', located within your current theme directory.

Creating a template to use this information is fairly straightforward if you have just a little knowledge of HTML or PHP:

1. On your server (via an FTP program, etc.), navigate to your current theme. This will live within wp-content/themes.
2. Copy an existing template - single.php is usually a good candidate - and call it twitter-image-host.php.
3. Open up twitter-image-host.php, and delete everything that looks post-related: This usually includes everything between the have_posts call and the matching endif, and may include some other surrounding content like an 'Edit this post' link.

4. Replace that which you have just deleted with something that uses the 'single entry' template tags above, like the following:

   <?php echo the_twitter_image() ?>
   <h1 class="center"><?php echo the_twitter_image_title() ?></h1>
   <p class="center">
       From <a href="http://twitter.com/<?php echo the_twitter_image_author() ?>"><?php echo the_twitter_image_author() ?></a>
        on <?php echo date('F jS, Y', the_twitter_image_date()) ?>
   </p>
   

5. Save the file, add some content (see the 'Posting Images' section), and see how it looks.

Using Template Tags in a Loop

Just like the WordPress Loop template tags, the template tags provided by this plugin can be used to display multiple posted entries. This can be used to create a custom page template that lists all submitted entries, with more flexibility than that offered by the shortcode.

Use begins with a call to query_twitter_images(), possibly with an argument to configure the search. If the result is true, then the loop begins, conditional upon has_twitter_images(), and starting with next_twitter_image() to load the next entry. The single template tags can then be used to customise the display of each entry.

Here is an example of use:

  <?php if ( query_twitter_images() ) : ?>
      <?php while ( has_twitter_images() ) : next_twitter_image(); ?>
          <div class="item entry">
            <div class="itemhead">
              <h1><a href="<?php echo the_twitter_image_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php echo the_twitter_image_title(); ?></a></h1>
              <div class="date"><?php echo date('F jS, Y', the_twitter_image_date()) ?></div>
            </div>

            <?php echo the_twitter_image() ?>
            <p class="center">From <a href="http://twitter.com/<?php echo the_twitter_image_author() ?>"><?php echo the_twitter_image_author() ?></a></p>
            </div>
      <?php endwhile; ?>
  <?php else : ?>
      <p>There are no Twitter images.</p>
  <?php endif; ?>

Posting Images

To start posting from your WordPress blog, select the "Twitter Image Host" menu item from the "Posts" administration section. Enter a title for your image, select your image file, hit Submit, and you will be given the URL for the image. If you wish to tweet straight from this facility, you will need to follow the instructions from that page to set up the plugin.

To access this facility from an application, use the access point displayed on the Twitter Image Host options page under "Settings".

The API is more-or-less the same as that of TweetPic, img.ly, etc.

To post from Twitter (Tweetie 2) for iPhone, visit Twitter/Tweetie's settings, and within Services, Image Service, select 'Custom', then enter the API URL as listed on the options page.

Making the URL even shorter

If you run WordPress from a sub-directory (for example, http://your-site.com/blog), then the short URLs generated by this plugin will look like http://your-site/blog/xxxxx. You can remove that 'blog' component via a little .htaccess trickery.

Here's how:

1. Create and open a new file in your site's webroot called ".htaccess". If there's one already there, just open that up and prepare to edit at the bottom.

2. Add the following, replacing 'blog' with the real subdirectory under which WordPress is installed:

   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/]+)/?$
   RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/blog/wp-content/twitter-image-host-content/%1.jpg -f [OR]
   RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/blog/wp-content/twitter-image-host-content/%1.png -f [OR]
   RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/blog/wp-content/twitter-image-host-content/%1.jpeg -f
   RewriteRule (.*) /blog/$1 [L]
   </IfModule>
   

   This will take any requests that:

   • Are located in the web-root (start with a slash, followed by anything but a slash until the end)
   • Have a corresponding file within Twitter Image Host's content directory Then, it'll rewrite the request silently to the real Twitter Image Host URL, without the viewer seeing.
3. In Twitter Image Host settings, set the 'Override URL Prefix' option to 'http://your-site.com/'

Credits

German Translation: Walter Güldenberg