Tag: jetpack

Can Jetpack still share blog posts to Twitter?

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Look, we’ve been through this. Firstly here, and then more recently, here. But twitter is falling apart.

The third party mobile apps disappeared, and then the first party web app stopped working. Instagram won’t share images to Twitter anymore, and yesterday, when I posted this post, the Jetpack plugin failed to connect to Twitter. And it doesn’t seem like the issue is at this end:

Jetpack is the plugin that 6000.co.za (and many thousands of other websites) use to tell people that there’s a new blog post fresh and ready for them to read. And now it’s not working – on Twitter at least. It’s still happily telling my Facebook fans that there’s been an update, and it would still post to LinkedIn if I wanted it to.

I don’t want it to.

Anyway, it seems likely that one of two things has happened here. Either, being allowed to connect to twitter from Jetpack (and Instagram) is now something that is now only allowed for paid accounts (no, I’m not going to), or something at twitter is broken because they (he) sacked all the competent staff.

Either way, there does seem to be a real rush to load a lot of straws onto the camel’s back to see what effect it will have.

EDIT: And, as Ian Betteridge predicted, no, it can’t.

Day 63, Part 2 – Getting social

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This is literally just a post to test a new way of connecting the blog to Twitter and to Facebook.

I’ll need to put some writing here, just to fill in a couple of gaps and make it look like a real blog post and to try and fool the magic robots that check on these things.

It might help to have an image in here too. I think I’ll use this one:

That’s a little yacht on the River Thames in London, taken in 2012.

And that should just about do it. Now let’s click the button and see if any of this has worked.

Sharing is caring

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You know that, right?

I was talking about Facebook (and bubonic plague, but that’s not important right now) earlier today, and I feel that it’s important that I bring another positive change to the blog to your attention in this regard: a Facebook share button on blog posts.

Yes readers, your repeated requests have finally been answered.

I had been using the Jetpack plugin for my social media sharing buttons, but astoundingly (to me at least) this otherwise lovely service allows for a Facebook LIKE button, but not a Facebook SHARE button. Googling this glaring omission gave a couple of rather complicated workarounds, but nothing that seemed to work for everyone. Like I have the time (or skill) to be poking the back the blog in this way with no guaranteed positive outcomes.

Forget it.

I’ve plumped instead for the WordPress Social Ring plugin. It’s free and it does the job just fine (see below). I going to see how it goes for a while and if I like it, I’m going to keep it. If I don’t like it, I’m going to get rid of it and try something else. Such is life in our throwaway society.

In the meantime, please feel free to SHARE ALL THE THINGS!!!!

finger_pointing_down

Street Spirit (Fade Out) Jetpack Youtube test post

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UPDATE: In answer to my own question posed at the bottom of this post, I have decided to deactivate the JetPack shortcode option. That’s why things might look a bit odd on this post.

As I mentioned yesterday, I (with no little assistance from The (long-suffering) Guru) am playing with some of the settings behind the scenes of 6000 miles… 

I’ve installed the JetPack plugin which comes highly recommended and now I’m trying to ensure some degree of compatibility, specifically with reference to the media (flickr, youtube, vimeo and soundcloud) stuff, on posts.

Currently, historical posts featuring:

  • Soundcloud – seem to be working, despite an initial conflict.
  • Youtube – will only work if I keep the existing plugin activated.
  • Vimeo – are dead.
  • Flickr – are also dead.

Work in progress, then.

Allegedly, now that JetPack is up and running, I should just be able to drop a YouTube url in here and it should display it. Streamlinetastic.
So let’s see what happens when we lob in a bit of Radiohead.

And there we go, but a bit small, no? Let’s try adding some dimensions:

 

Much better. The only awkward bit being the fact that the coding required to make it the correct size is actually more laborious than the current plugin I’m using for this purpose.

So now the big decision: to move the media over onto JetPack’s tidier, less bulky, all-in-one solution or to stick with what I’ve got?