Mitsol Tweet display documentation for joomla websites
How to install
Installation is easy just extract the downloaded zip, inside find the package zip with specific joomla version, upload and install this zip. This is a package which installs main tweet module(mod_mitsoltweets) and a component(com_mitsoltweets) used only for making ajax request from tweet module. you will find these 3 extensions in extensions->extension manager->manage page. If you uninstall tweet package, it will also uninstall both tweet component and module automatically. Never install/uninstall tweet component and module seperately. So always install/uninstall tweet package and rest will be done automatically.Important:
There are limits on calling to twitter api to get tweet data. loading a tweet module with data is said to be one request to twitter api. One unique module can make -1. total 180 requests per 15 minutes for getting tweets of a user and
2. total 180 requests per 15 minutes for getting tweets of a hashtag or search string
here one unique module means module instance/instances which have same settings(username/hashtag/search string input and same application key and token), does not matter on how many pages you have that unique module in your site. FYI mdoule instance means mitsol tweets module or one duplicated mitsol tweets module if you created multiple tweets modules by clicking duplicate button in module manager.
If each unique module's requests to twitter api exceeds above request limit in your site, your application may be banned, so to overcome the problem, caching the tweet data in module table is used. each unique module will save tweet data for 3 minutes in database table before making another request to twitter api to get all new tweet data. For an example, if your unique module set to show tweets of user "twitterapi" and number of tweets set is "10" then tweet data will be saved in database with this name combination - "mitsoltweets_user_twitterapi_10" and 3 minutes counting will start with it, in this 3 minutes no matter how many times your users load your different pages along with that unique module, they will see same tweet display unitil 3 minutes expired to see new data. If you change either username/hashtag/search string or number of tweets then unique module will get & save new tweets data to cache table with new name like - "mitsoltweets_user_twitterapi_20" or "mitsoltweets_user_messi_10" and 3 mintues counting starts with it. So always make sure how many unique modules you place in your site which don't exceed request limit of 180 per 15 minutes to twitter api (Although caching reduced that limit to 5 in 15 minutes, but can vary if you use different unique modules with different tweet display). FYI if you use one twitter application's keys and access token for a unique module then its counting of request limit is different from another unique module request limit which uses another application's keys and access token.
To run twitter module, you must create twitter application and use its keys. All steps are written below -
Create twitter application and keys -
Step1: Login to your twitter account. Then go to this page - https://apps.twitter.com/. Click 'Create new app'. Following page will appear as shown in image below. enter all fields except Callback url, then check 'yes i agree' check box and click 'Create your twitter application' button.
you will get application generation success message and application details tab.
Step2: There click 'API keys' tab and you will see api key and secret codes as shown at the top of the image below. At bottom click 'Create my access token' button and your access token and token secret codes will be created after some time by refreshing the page if needed As shown finally in the image below -
copy that 'API key' value and put in 'Consumer key' box in 'Module view and main settings' tab in tweet module settings page. In the same way -
copy 'API secret' value into 'Consumer secret' box in tweet module settings page,
copy 'Access token' value in 'Access token' box in tweet module settings page,
copy 'Access token secret' value in 'Access secret' box in tweet module settings page and save module settings.
Configure module settings to display tweets -
1. In module view settings tab in settings page, select either "tweets" or "tweet slide" to display tweets normally with scroll or with sliding of tweets.2. In "Tweets and slide view general settings" tab select for "Get tweets by" to display tweets from a user or hashtag or search string.
3. Acoording to that selection above enter your twitter username or hashtag or search string in the corresponding setting input box( twitter user name, hashtag(excluding #), search string)
4. Rest of the settings are relating with layuout/general settings of your tweet display.
5. "Tweet slide view settings" tab are for customizing displaying tweet slide display
tweet modules save tweet data to module database table to overcome the problem of request limit to twitter.com as summarized in "Important" section above this doc, if you used different combinations of tweet display by setting different twitter usernames/hashtags/search strings and number of tweets then many rows of data were created, which you can clear by setting the view - 'clear tweet cache data' from module view settings and loading the module at frontend. A submit button will appear to clear all cache data from database.