Tag: Howto

Twitter 132: Creating a Twitter Search Widget

[ratings]

In Thesis 33, I invited those interested in helping to spread the word about the #wristpain Twitter chat to

  1. retweet this: @mayoclinic: Know anyone with mystery #wristpain? Discuss a common cause Thurs on Twitter w/@RABergerMD http://bit.ly/dBlMH
  2. post to their Facebook and/or (if you’re really motivated)
  3. embed a Twitter search widget in your blog in a post on in the blog’s sidebar.

So I thought it would be good to give a step-by-step course on how to set up a Twitter search widget.

Note: This is one of the things you can’t do in WordPress.com, because the javascript is not allowed on WordPress.com blogs. You need to be using a self-hosted (WordPress.org) version, or a platform like Blogger or Typepad. One of the few downsides of the free WordPress.com platform.

So, here’s the step-by-step:

1. Go to the Twitter Search Widget page. You will see a screen like this (click any of the images to enlarge):

OMGsearch

2. Since you don’t really want to display all of the Tweets using “OMG” in their body, you need to change the title and search criteria. Here’s what I did for my widget about the #wristpain Twitter chat:

Berger chat

3. You can adjust appearance and other settings if you want, but all you really need to do at this point is click the “Finish & Grab Code” button, highlight the code by clicking on it, and copy it to your clipboard.

Finish grab code

4. Go to your self-hosted WordPress blog (the process is similar for Blogger or Typepad) and either create a text widget for the sidebar, or a new post into which you want to insert your widget.

If you are doing a new post, be sure to switch from Visual to HTML view before you paste in your code:

HTML not Visual


Blogging 123: Customizing Your WordPress Profile

When you create your username in WordPress or WordPress.com, it has to be all lowercase letters (or numbers) with no spaces. That doesn’t look very professional when you username is associated with a post or a comment on your blog or someone else’s. 

Fortunately, you can customize how you want your name to appear on WordPress (or WordPress.com) blogs, and the screencast below shows you how. It also shows you the process for uploading a photo (or Gravatar) to also be connected to your WordPress comments (or posts, if your WordPress theme includes Gravatars on posts.)

There are several other customization options to which I briefly allude in this screencast, but the two I’ve listed are the most important, in my opinion.

Update: You can view the screencast in the SMUG group in Facebook.

Blogging 363: Embed Facebook Videos in WordPress

Here’s another advantage of self-hosted WordPress over WordPress.com, particularly as Facebook has extended the functionality of its video player.

For each video you have uploaded to Facebook, you have an option to embed it in your blog.

picture-4

When you click Embed this Video, you see a window pop up like this:

picture-51

And then, when you’ve copied the code, you can just paste it into your WordPress blog post in the HTML editor,

picture-8

so it looks like this:

picture-7

Which is what I did below, and you see the results. I had not indicated any privacy protections on this video, so you should be able to see it. Please let me know if you can’t.

This is an Aase family classic, in which I discuss the ins and outs of our birdhouse project with my firstborn son. Jake demonstrates exceptional bravery in completing the conversation even after receiving a grave injury.

Twitter 102: Creating an Account

This slidecast is part of the Twitter curriculum at Social Media University, Global. It takes you step-by-step through the process of creating your Twitter account.

Below is a narrated slidecast from slideshare.net. If you like, you can click this link to open another browser window at the Twitter home page, and then come back to this window and start the slidecast. Hit the “pause” button whenever you’d like, and go back to the other window and do your own Twitter signup.


Creating an account in Twitter really isn’t that hard, but if you’re just starting I thought having this step-by-step illustration might be helpful.

Assignments:

  1. Create your Twitter account.
  2. Follow me on these two Twitter accounts, @LeeAase and @SMUG_U. I’ll follow you back. And that will enable us to create a much more interactive community of SMUGgles as we learn about Twitter together.

Add to FacebookAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to Ma.gnoliaAdd to TechnoratiAdd to FurlAdd to Newsvine

Blogging 116: Writing a WordPress Blog Post

When writing a blog post in WordPress, as I will demonstrate in the video screencast that accompanies this course in the Blogging curriculum at SMUG, you can format your text in many ways, similar to what you do in Microsoft Word. And the toolbar is much like what you are familiar with in Word.

You can make text bold, or italic (or you can even strikethrough, which is what you should do when correcting an error in your posts after they have been published, so it doesn’t look like you’re trying to rewrite history and avoid ‘fessing up to your mistakes.)

You can have

  • Bulleted
  • Otherwise known as
  • Unordered lists

Or your lists can be numbered, with the

  1. First point
  2. Second point
  3. And so on.

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