How do I use Ultimento’s Twitter Feed extension?
Ultimento’s exclusive Twitter Feed Magento extension can display your Twitter feed anywhere in your Magento site!
Admin settings
The Twitter Feed extension comes with 3 very simple admin settings:
Twitter Feed Magento Extension - Admin Settings
Twitter account: That one’s simple – just put your Twitter username there 
.
Cache length: The number of seconds to keep the feed in the cache before checking for new tweets. 3600 is the default value and I’d recommend using a number above 1800 (half an hour).
If your cache is set to 1 hour, the extension will display the cached feed to all users until a user loads the page at least 1 hour after the feed was last cached. For that user the extension will connect to Twitter’s API again and if there are new tweets it will update the cache.
Number of Tweets to load: That’s also pretty self explanatory . Don’t load too many tweets as that’s useless but anywhere 1 and 10 is great.
Implementation
The Twitter Feed extension is extremely easy to use. You can embed your Twitter Feed anywhere on any page of your Magento store by calling the template file directly from your Magento admin like this:
{{block type="core/template" template="twitterfeed/tweets.phtml"}}
Here are a few examples of implementation:
In the left column of any page (CMS page, category page, or product page)
1. Login to your Magento admin, navigate to CMS > Static Blocks and hit “Add New Block”.
2. Fill out the fields like so:
- Block Title → Twitter Feed Left
- Identifier → twitter_feed_left
- Store View → Select your store view
- Status → Enabled
- Content →
<div class="block"> <div class="block-title"> <h3>Twitter Feed</h3> </div> <div class="block-content">{{block type="core/template" template="twitterfeed/tweets.phtml"}}</div> </div>
3. Add the following Layout Update XML via the Magento admin where you want to include the feed (in Magento all pages have a layout update feature – CMS pages, category pages, and product pages):
<reference name="left"> <block type="cms/block" name="left.cms.nav" before="-"> <action method="setBlockId"><block_id>twitter_feed_left</block_id></action> </block> </reference>
Here’s what it’ll look like: demo.ultimento.com/about-ultimento.
Within the body of content of any Magento page
All you have to do is add this via the Magento admin to any page’s content:
{{block type="core/template" template="twitterfeed/tweets.phtml"}}
The Twitter Feed extension comes with a number of handy templates for this type of implementations and for more advanced users everything can be easily customized via CSS.
Half width (float right):
<div class="ndg-tweet-feed halfright">
<h2>Half width (left) example:</h2>
{{block type="core/template" template="twitterfeed/tweets.phtml"}}
</div>
Halk width (float left):
<div class="ndg-tweet-feed halfleft">
<h2>Half width (left) example:</h2>
{{block type="core/template" template="twitterfeed/tweets.phtml"}}
</div>
Full width:
<div class="ndg-tweet-feed full">
<h2>Full width example:</h2>
{{block type="core/template" template="twitterfeed/tweets.phtml"}}
</div>
Enjoy!
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hi, i implemented the twitter feed but for some reason it puts in the center and not in a block on the left – i copied everything above – what have i done wrong?
thanks
Hi Helen – it’s impossible to say without at the very least being able to look at the URL where that’s happening on your Magento installation. Did you make sure to follow the instructions under “In the left column of any page” carefully?
If you’re still having problems with this feel free to send me your Magento and FTP info via the help desk.
We’ve followed these instructions exactly and can’t seem to make it appear on the sidebar of a CMS page. We also put the twitter block code directly into the content of the CMS page and couldn’t get anything to appear.
We have caching turned off and made the change to a CMS page, 2 columns, into the Layout Update XML area, and nothing shows up. Any ideas?
Hi James – off the top my head the only thing I can think of is cache – did you make sure to clear your Magento cache?
Hey James, I had same issue just figured it out. There appears to be a typo/error in the demo code above, where it says to update the layout XML with
twitter_feed_leftcolumn. Change that to justtwitter_feed_leftto match the name you gave it when making the static block.Hey Ryan – thanks for that!!! I fixed the typo in the instructions
.
how do I remove the twitter from the product detail page?
Hi Gio – do you mean you want to remove the Tweet button? You can simply turn it off from your admin panel! It’s under
.
Ultimento > Settings > Social network options > Share on Twitter > Enable/DisableI have done that and cleared the cache, but it is still there!
Sorry, it did work (I had done it on the wrong store!). Thanks!
Is there a php code for showing this plugin ?