Twitter Username Management Script (TUMS)
By Steve Poland • February 23, 2009
The script is no longer for sale.
Purchase of the script entitles you to one license for commercial or personal use, but not resale. Upon your purchase, the script is available via secure download link as a zip with all the files needed and an easy installation readme file (see below to see this). I even include limited support if you’re having problems or questions. The script cost me $2,000 to have coded. Below is info on the script, installation info, and screenshots.
TUMS is a script I had coded to manage multiple Twitter usernames. The script will update details on each username and it will also automate tweets to each username from RSS feeds you supply for each username. I use it to manage 250+ sports teams Twitter accounts I have — I have multiple RSS feeds for each specific team, and it then sends out tweets of new headlines for each team from the specific RSS feeds for each team.
The script easily allows you to upload a CSV file with details on each of the accounts: username, password, background image location, avatar image location, profile details (location / name / more info URL / one line bio), profile design details (bgcolor / font color / link color / sidebar fill color / sidebar border color), and then 5 RSS feeds. You could increase the # of RSS feeds with a simple change to the script.
CRON’s run on your server, polling the RSS feeds that are individually specified for each username and pulls the latest headlines. The CRON then tweets out 1 new headline every 15 minutes on each username, using the latest headline in the queue. It then keeps going through the queue for each username until it empties — if the RSS feeds supply tons of headlines for a username, then it may never get to most of the items (they remain in the queue). You can alter the script to change this — we just didn’t want to spam users.
The CRON grabs the link to the headline, it then creates a new URL for the headline, which links to a domain you specify. When the page loads, a tiny FRAME loads at the top of the page that kind of looks like the Gmail infobar. In this infobar are arrows for the user to flip amongst more headlines tied to your Twitter username, along with a link back to the Twitter account. See an example of one of my accounts here: Sabres, and an example article page that a tweet links out to.
Libraries needed are included in the zip as well. There is a config file that makes installing this very easy. In the zip is an “install.txt” file to help you install it:
## TUMS Requirements
PHP 5.2
MySQL 5
Apache 2 with mod_rewrite enabled
## How to install TUMS
1. Move the contents of the html folder in to a folder on your server that is web accessible.
2. Importing the sql file in to your database. There are a few ways this can be done. Just import via software, website, or command line to your mysql server. If using the command line, you’ll want to use ‘mysql -u <username> -p tweetrss < tweetrss.sql’
3. Edit the file html/lib/config.php. Here you will want to change anywhere that says yourdomain.com to your own domain. The same goes for /your/public_html/ and the mysql settings.
4. Next you will want to add three scripts to cron at the suggested intervals. You will want to change the locations.
/your/public_html/lib/cron/follower_track.php – Nightly
/your/public_html/lib/cron/read_rss.php – Every 30 Minutes
/your/public_html/lib/cron/twitter_post.php – Every 30 Minutes
5. Open each of the files at the top, and change the include path /your/public_html/lib/config.php to the correct one.
6. The last step requires us to set a password for the admin section. First edit /admin/.htaccess Fix the path /your/public_html/admin/.htpasswd Then edit admin/.htpasswd Go to the following site http://home.flash.net/cgi-bin/pw.pl , pick a username and password, then paste the bold line. It should look like “test:sYBAcFwKi/y..” (no quotes) You can also use htpasswd from the command line if you know how.
## TUMS Screenshots
USER LIST SCREENSHOT – this is the script’s homepage and gives an overview of your accounts.
USERNAME DETAILS PAGE – this shows specific details for a username and allows you to have that username’s info on Twitter be updated using these details (which are inputted via the main CSV upload). You may use this manual update if you update the background image on your server, then have the script run so that the background image is then updated/uploaded to Twitter.
FEED STATS – this displays each RSS feed you’re pulling from for each username and the # of items in each of those feeds that you have stored in the DB.
IMPORT CSV FILE – this allows you to upload/import your CSV file that includes all the details of your Twitter usernames. Here’s an example CSV to give you a feel of what you’ll put in it (passwords are left blank in example).
UPDATE USER INFO – after you import your CSV script, you then need to update your Twitter accounts by running this script. The ‘New Accounts’ are new accounts you added, and will just update those on Twitter. The ‘All Accounts’ will update every attribute of every account you have with Twitter.
Note: Most won’t ever have this problem, but: At the moment, if you no longer use an account, or Twitter revokes one of yours, you will need to manually remove it from the DB — but you could just leave it in there, it just won’t validate, but it won’t break anything.
UPDATE USER INFO *UPDATED* - this is what the screen looks like after you run the update script.
TWEETS SENT – this shows the latest tweets being sent from your system to your Twitter usernames, so you can ensure operations are working smoothly.
REPORTS - this shows the # of clicks per day on your articles, as well as the # of clicks to each article for the day that are posted via your usernames.
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Comments
6 Responses to “Twitter Username Management Script (TUMS)”
Got something to say?
Very cool script. What is the vision to generate revenue from the script’s functionality?
Once everything is installed you’ll want to go to http:///admin
Log in with the username and password that you created in the last step.
To import users you can use phpMyAdmin though the system was designed
to import a csv file with all of the needed information. Here is the
format that the csv file should be in.
search name,username,password,image_directory,profile_image,profile_background_image,location,Name,more
info url,One Line
Bio,profile_background_color,profile_text_color,profile_link_color,profile_sidebar_fill_color,profile_sidebar_border_color,RSS1,RSS2,RSS3
To import your csv file you can click on Import at the top and upload
that file. There is one last step and that’s updating twitter with
your user’s information. You will want to do this even if you added
the accounts by hand. Just click on Update User info at the top of the
admin section, then click on All or New Accounts. The script keeps
track of changes you made when importing a newer version of the csv
file so we don’t have to hit twitter any more than we have to.
Everything after this is automatic. The rss feeds should start to
store (if I remember correctly it will do that right after you add a
user) and tweets will start to post.
Will probably purchase this script shortly. Question:
1. Don’t imagine the scripts automate twitter account creation? Do you know of an efficient way to create dozens of new twitter accounts without having to do it manually on twitter.com?
2. Any ideas on revenue oppty’s associated with using these scripts?
Thanks.
Chase,
1) This doesn’t automate creation of accounts; I don’t know of any other way except manually.
2) Possible rev opportunities — using an eBay Partner Network account or Amazon Associates account [or Commission Junction or LinkShare] and tweeting out relevant products/services for sale, depending on the focus of your twitter account. [i.e. For a NY Yankees account, you could tweet out links to memorabilia on ebay, movies on amazon, etc] and earn a commission from ebay, amazon, etc.
Thanks for your response.
1. Arghh….. bet you have it down to under 20 seconds an account…..
2. Have you found ebay/amazon affiliate links work well? Have any conversation statistics to share (such as tweeted URL actually clicked)?
Steve,
My friend Ian told me about your script.
I came to your blog but I can’t find the link to download the script.
Can you tell me where or how I can get the script?
Can you delete my other post?
I just woke up!
Thank you,
Ryan