[Plugin: Live Blogging] Automatically add a link to tweets?

I assume I could change this to make it work…

//add hashtag
            if ($hashtag)
	    {
                $content .= " #" . $hashtag;
	    }

Nevermind. I just deleted the # and it was good to go. Of course, if I ever need to use a hashtag, I’ll just be sure to include the # in the custom field.

Is there any chance you could elaborate on what you did to make links show up in tweets?

Thanks,
Cian

Go to Plugins –> Editor –> Live Blogging –> live-blogging.php

Find this:

//add hashtag
            if ($hashtag)
	    {
                $content .= " #" . $hashtag;
	    }

Change it to:

//add hashtag
            if ($hashtag)
	    {
                $content .= " " . $hashtag;
	    }

Then, when you create the live blog post, add a custom field with the name “liveblogging_hashtag” followed by the link you want under Value. I’d get the link shortened before you insert it and save.

Many thanks!
I appreciate your coming back a month later to help me and future people who search out.

Cian

You’re welcome. I’m always happy to help the community. I know they’ve been there for me in the past.

I made these changes to add the URL (changes in bold):

//get the hashtag (we need the id of the parent blog post, not $post->ID here)
 $parent_post_id = (int)$_POST['live_blogging_entry_post'];
$hashtag = get_post_meta($parent_post_id, "liveblogging_hashtag", true);
<strong>$permalink = get_permalink( $parent_post_id );</strong>

 //how much space do we have?
if ($hashtag) {
 $tweetlength = 140 - strlen($hashtag)<strong>- strlen($permalink</strong>)- 2;
	    } else {
                $tweetlength = 140;
	    }

  //do I need to trim the tweet?
 if (strlen($content) > $tweetlength) {
 $content = substr($content, 0, $tweetlength - 1)
                         . html_entity_decode('…', ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8');
 }
//add hashtag and permalink
if ($hashtag)
   {
$content .= " #" . $hashtag<strong>." ".$permalink</strong>;
    }

[Moderator Note: Please post code or markup snippets between backticks or use the code button.]

I know this is a few months old now but I am wondering if there is a way to shorten the permalinks in anyway?

Our URL’s are pretty long so take up a large portion of each tweet, it would be much better if they were output in a format such as bit.ly etc.

If anyone knows how to do this can you let me know?

Thanks

Nick

nickc25: Follow Jeremy Sarber’s instructions and instead of putting a hashtag in the liveblogging_hashtag custom field putting a short URL instead should sort it