michaeltyson

<p>Keep your traffic in the family!  Host Twitter images on your own site, with support for comments and trackbacks, image<br />
resizing and thumbnailing with Lightbox.</p>
<p>Twitter doesn’t yet come with its own inline image support, so we tend to be limited to using image hosting services,<br />
and linking to them with short URLs. So, services like Twitpic host the image, and we direct traffic to them in return.</p>
<p>Better to take advantage of that traffic, and host images on your own site.  This way, viewers come to your site, instead<br />
of someone else’s!</p>
<p>Posted images are displayed in your normal WordPress template, with support for comments and trackbacks, without any<br />
setup required.  Most themes should work with this, but if not, or if a different layout is required, a custom theme template<br />
can also be provided (see ‘Creating a Template’).</p>
<p>Provides an HTML form for posting image content, as well as an API modelled on that of <a href="http://img.ly/pages/API" rel="nofollow ugc">img.ly</a>,<br />
compatible with Tweetie (for iPhone) and any other Twitter clients that speak this protocol and offer configuration of<br />
custom image hosting services.</p>
<p>Uses Twitter’s authentication and a list of authorised accounts, so you can let others use your image host too.  You can even<br />
post status updates to Twitter while submitting images.</p>
<p>Provides a widget and shortcode to display uploaded images.  This supports filtering by Twitter account, styling with CSS,<br />
and Lightbox/Thickbox.</p>
<h3>Widget</h3>
<p>To use the widget, simply visit the Widgets page and drag the “Twitter Images” widget into a sidebar and configure it.</p>
<h3>Shortcode</h3>
<p>Shortcodes are snippets of text that can be inserted into pages and posts.  These snippets are replaced by various generated content.<br />
Twitter Image Host provides a ‘twitter-images’ shortcode to display images you have uploaded within a page/post.</p>
<p>Available parameters:</p>
<pre><code>  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
</code></pre>
<p>Example:</p>
<pre><code>  [twitter-images columns=4 lightbox="true"]<h3>PHP function</h3>
</code></pre>
<p>As well as the shortcode, you can also use call <code>twitter_image_host_images()</code> from within a template to<br />
produce the same output.  Pass the same arguments as the shortcode as associative array values:</p>
<pre><code>  <h3>Recently submitted images</h3>
  <?php twitter_image_host_images(array('author' => 'ATastyPixel', 'columns' => 6, 'lightbox' => true)); ?>
</code></pre>
<p>Tip: Use this in the <code>twitter-image-host.php</code> template (see ‘Creating a Single Template’, below) to display<br />
other posted images when viewing an image.  Use <code>the_twitter_image_author()</code> to filter the list, to show<br />
only other submissions by the same Twitter account as the one of the currently displayed image.</p>
<h3>Template Tags</h3>
<p>This plugin provides several template tags, for use both in displaying single posts (see ‘Creating a Single Template’), and for custom pages which display<br />
many posts in a loop (see ‘Using Template Tags in a Loop’).</p>
<p>The available template tags are:</p>
<h4>Single Entry Tags</h4>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_image_permalink</code></em></p>
<p>Returns the URL to the view page</p>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_image_url</code></em></p>
<p>Returns the full URL to the image, or the image thumbnail if the original image was large</p>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_full_image_url</code></em></p>
<p>Returns the URL to the full-sized image, if one exists, or false otherwise</p>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_image_title</code></em></p>
<p>The title of the image</p>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_image_date</code></em></p>
<p>The date (timestamp) of the image – use date() to configure the display</p>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_image_author</code></em></p>
<p>The associated Twitter account</p>
<p><em><code>the_twitter_image</code></em></p>
<p>Returns HTML to display the image and a link to the full-sized image if it exists, with Lightbox rel tags.</p>
<h4>Loop Tags</h4>
<p><em><code>query_twitter_images</code></em></p>
<p>Search for Twitter images</p>
<p>Available parameters (passed as associative array):</p>
<pre><code> 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
</code></pre>
<p><em><code>has_twitter_images</code></em></p>
<p>Use with loop: Determine if there are more images</p>
<p><em><code>next_twitter_image</code></em></p>
<p>Use with loop: Get the next image</p>
<h4>Creating a Single Template</h4>
<p>By default, this plugin will use the standard post template (‘single.php’).  However, if you wish, you can create a<br />
custom template to display hosted images.  The template should be called ‘twitter-image-host.php’, located within your<br />
current theme directory.</p>
<p>Creating a template to use this information is fairly straightforward if you have just a little knowledge of HTML or PHP:</p>
<ol>
<li>On your server (via an FTP program, etc.), navigate to your current theme.  This will live within <code>wp-content/themes</code>.</li>
<li>Copy an existing template – <code>single.php</code> is usually a good candidate – and call it <code>twitter-image-host.php</code>.</li>
<li>Open up <code>twitter-image-host.php</code>, and delete everything that looks post-related: This usually includes everything between<br />
the <code>have_posts</code> call and the matching <code>endif</code>, and may include some other surrounding content like an ‘Edit this post’ link.</li>
<li>
<p>Replace that which you have just deleted with something that uses the ‘single entry’ template tags above, like the following:</p>
<pre><code><?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>
</code></pre>
</li>
<li>
<p>Save the file, add some content (see the ‘Posting Images’ section), and see how it looks.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>Using Template Tags in a Loop</h4>
<p>Just like the WordPress Loop template tags, the template tags provided by this plugin can be used to display multiple posted entries.<br />
This can be used to create a custom page template that lists all submitted entries, with more flexibility than that offered by the shortcode.</p>
<p>Use begins with a call to <code>query_twitter_images()</code>, possibly with an argument to configure the search.  If the result is true, then the loop begins,<br />
conditional upon <code>has_twitter_images()</code>, and starting with <code>next_twitter_image()</code> to load the next entry.  The single template tags can then be used<br />
to customise the display of each entry.</p>
<p>Here is an example of use:</p>
<pre><code>  <?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; ?><h3>Posting Images</h3>
</code></pre>
<p>To start posting from your WordPress blog, select the “Twitter Image Host” menu item from the “Posts” administration section.<br />
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<br />
to tweet straight from this facility, you will need to follow the instructions from that page to set up the plugin.</p>
<p>To access this facility from an application, use the access point displayed on the Twitter Image Host options page under “Settings”.</p>
<p>The API is more-or-less the same as that of <a href="http://twitpic.com/api.do" rel="nofollow ugc">TweetPic</a>, <a href="http://img.ly/pages/API" rel="nofollow ugc">img.ly</a>, etc.</p>
<p>To post from Twitter (Tweetie 2) for iPhone, visit Twitter/Tweetie’s settings, and within <em>Services, Image Service</em>, select ‘Custom’, then<br />
enter the API URL as listed on the options page.</p>
<h3>Making the URL even shorter</h3>
<p>If you run WordPress from a sub-directory (for example, http://your-site.com/blog), then the short URLs generated by this plugin will<br />
look like <code>http://your-site/blog/xxxxx</code>.  You can remove that ‘blog’ component via a little <code>.htaccess</code> trickery.</p>
<p>Here’s how:</p>
<ol>
<li>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.</li>
<li>
<p>Add the following, replacing ‘blog’ with the real subdirectory under which WordPress is installed:</p>
<pre><code><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>
</code></pre>
<p>This will take any requests that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Are located in the web-root (start with a slash, followed by anything but a slash until the end)</li>
<li>Have a corresponding file within Twitter Image Host’s content directory<br />
Then, it’ll rewrite the request silently to the real Twitter Image Host URL, without the viewer seeing.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>In Twitter Image Host settings, set the ‘Override URL Prefix’ option to ‘http://your-site.com/’</li>
</ol>
<h3>Credits</h3>
<p>German Translation: <a href="http://mb.walter.silvergeeks.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Walter Güldenberg</a></p>


Twitter Image Host

Host Twitter images from your blog and keep your traffic, rather than using a service like Twitpic and losing your viewers.

Dave Jesch

Steveorevo

<p>DesktopServer for WordPress eases localhost to live server deployment by publishing hosting provider server details via a protected XML-RPC feed and API to an authorized administrator only. It also provides assisted deployments to hosting providers that support file system direct.</p>


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