Keir Whitaker

The Twitter News Feed plugin has a specific use case, that is to import tweets from defined Twitter users containing specific hashtags into WordPress.
Why Use Twitter News Feed
Let’s say everyone in your company has a Twitter account and you would like their updates to appear on your site but some of them tweet about pizzas and beer as well as some good links and company news. Twitter News Feed allows you to import tweets tagged with certain hashtags from those users.
For example you might want to import tweets from @johndoe and @janedoe containing the hashtag #news. Twitter News Feed can do this for you. There is no limit to the number of users or hashtags you can add. The main benefit being that you can power your news feed using Twitter as well as allowing the conversation to continue using WordPress comments.
Automatically add Tweets as Posts
Twitter News Feed is designed to add the imported tweets as posts, although you can choose to not add them to the database as posts and just grab them on each page load using a template function. In the admin panel (available from the Settings menu) you are able to specify hashtags, usernames as well as define a category to add your imported tweets to as well as a default user.
When adding Tweets as posts a number of custom fields are added that you are then able to use in your templates. These are:
<ul>
<li>status => The full tweet returned from the RSS feed</li>
<li>status_href => A href to the tweet</li>
<li>status_id => The status id of the tweet</li>
<li>twitter_username => The username of the tweets author (NB: keirwhitaker NOT @keirwhitaker)</li>
<li>twitter_username_link => A href link to the tweet authors homepage (NB: includes the @)</li>
</ul>
Use the Jabber field to Map Users to Tweets
Twitter News Feed goes one step further and will attribute posts to the correct author. It does this by looking in the “jabber” field in the user profile for a Twitter username. Let’s say we enter “johndoe” in the jabber field any tweets from @johndoe will be attributed to him. If no match is found the post will be added to the default user defined in the Twitter News Feed admin panel.
Features
<ul>
<li>Allows multiple Twitter users to add news to a WordPress blog based on defined hashtags</li>
<li>Automatically adds Tweets to WordPress to a defined category</li>
<li>Maps Twitter usernames to the “jabber” field in the user profile, if not found Tweets are attributed to a “default” user e.g. Twitter News Bot</li>
<li>Uses WordPress scheduled events to look for new tweets for every hour</li>
<li>Provides a template function to grab updates but not store them as posts </li>
</ul>
Support
If you have any problems with of feedback on Twitter News Feed please email keir[at]keirwhitaker.com
You can also follow me on Twitter – http://twitter.com/keirwhitaker
<h3>Requirements</h3>
<ol>
<li>Twitter News Feed 1.0 requires PHP5</li>
<li>Simplepie – http://simplepie.org/ (This is included in the plugin)</li>
</ol>
<h3>Usage</h3>
There are two ways to display Tweets on your blog.
Firstly, if you choose not to store your Tweets as post you can use the following template tag “tnf_get_news_as_array()” in your templates
<pre><code><?php $tweets = tnf_get_news_as_array(); ?>
<ul>
<?php foreach($tweets as $tweet): ?>
<li><?php echo $tweet["description_filtered"]." - ".date("l jS \of F Y - H:i:s"); ?></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
</code></pre>
The available array elements are as follows:
<ul>
<li>user_id => (string e.g 1 – needs to be cast to int if required)</li>
<li>date => (Y-m-d H:i:s)</li>
<li>link => (string e.g http://twitter.com/keirwhitaker/status/2784830708)</li>
<li>id => (string e.g 2784830708 – the actual status id of the tweet)</li>
<li>description => (string – The unfiltered tweet which will include the #tag(s))</li>
<li>description_filtered => (string – The filtered tweet)</li>
<li>twitter_username_link => (String – href of the Twitter username)</li>
</ul>
The other option is to use WordPress to pull out posts from the category specified in the Twitter News Feed admin panel.
See https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts for examples.

Twitter News Feed

Collects Tweets based on specific Twitter usernames and hashtags and then adds them as posts

Tajam

Flex Posts is a widget to display posts in various different layouts. It is useful for a news site where you need to display a lot of posts in a page.
The widget is responsive so you can place it in any widget area. The widget content will adapt based on the width of its container. In a narrow area like standard sidebar, posts will be displayed vertically, but in a wider area, posts will be displayed in 2 or 3 columns depends on the container’s width.
<h4>Widget Settings</h4>
<ul>
<li>Title: Set the widget title. Leave it empty to hide the title section.</li>
<li>Title URL: Set the title link url. Leave it empty to disable link in the title.</li>
<li>Layout: Select a widget layout, from layout 1 to 4.</li>
<li>Post type: Select the post type. Options include: Post, Page, custom post types if available, and any.</li>
<li>Category: Select a category for the posts, or choose All Categories to disable this filter.</li>
<li>Tag(s): Set a post tag (using the tag slug). You can also use comma separated value for multiple tags. Prepending a tag with a hyphen will exclude posts matching that tag. Eg, <code>featured, -video</code> will show posts tagged with <code>featured</code> but not <code>video</code>.</li>
<li>Order by: Set the order in which the posts will be displayed. Options include: Newest, Oldest, Most Commented, Alphabetical, Random, Modified Date, Page order.</li>
<li>Number of posts to show: Set the number of posts displayed.</li>
<li>Number of posts to skip: Set the number of posts to displace or pass over.</li>
<li>Exclude current post: Choose to show or hide current post.</li>
<li>Show image on: Select in which posts the image will be displayed. Options include: All posts, First post only, or none.</li>
<li>Image size: Select image size from registered image sizes.</li>
<li>Show post title: Choose to show or hide the post title.</li>
<li>Show categories: Choose to show or hide the categories.</li>
<li>Show author: Choose to show or hide the author.</li>
<li>Show author image: Choose to show or hide the author image.</li>
<li>Show date: Choose to show or hide the date.</li>
<li>Show comments number: Choose to show or hide the comments number.</li>
<li>Show excerpt: Choose to show or hide the excerpt</li>
<li>Excerpt length: Set the number of words for the excerpt.</li>
<li>Show read more link: Choose to show or hide the Read More link.</li>
<li>Read more text: Set the text for the read more link. You can leave it empty to use the default text <code>Read More</code>.</li>
<li>Show pagination: Choose to show or hide the pagination links.</li>
<li>Block title HTML element: Choose the HTML element for the block title. Options include: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, div, p, span.</li>
<li>Post title HTML element: Choose the HTML element for the post title. Options include: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, div, p, span.</li>
<li>Additional class(es): Set a custom class for the widget container. You can use spaces to separate multiple classes.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Gutenberg Block</h4>
Since version 1.1.0, Flex Posts also includes a gutenberg block. You can add the widget directly into the post/page content with the WP 5.0 block editor.
<h4>Demo</h4>
Please visit the live demo here: <a href="https://tajam.id/flex-posts-demo/" rel="nofollow ugc">Flex Posts Demo</a>
<h4>Requirements</h4>
This plugin has been tested and works with at least PHP 5.3 installed in your environment. But we strongly recommend you to use the latest PHP version, as using older versions may expose you to security vulnerabilities.

Flex Posts – Widget and Gutenberg Block

I think this plugin has a lot of potential. I am using it in all of my sites. For me there are a few things holding this plugin from being perfect:

- If we could have the option of selecting a few categories on the query instead of having wether all categories or just one, that would be much appreciated.

- The Layout #3 doesn't fill the whole width of its container, like the others do. Can you please fix this. Thanks!

Hands down the most professional post layout block you'll ever find

A widget to display posts with thumbnails in various layouts. Fits nicely in any widget area size.

Twitter News Feed vs Flex Posts – Widget and Gutenberg Block