If you look at the About page at Purple Star Consulting you will see we have our Tweets scrolling through on the sidebar. This allows people visiting our site to know we are on Twitter and also see some of the things we are talking about. Perhaps it will entertain them, maybe even interest them enough to start following us. You may have seen this used on many other sites and wondered how you can get this on your own.

How do I set up a Twitter Widget?

Widgets can be used to pull in information from another website or application directly onto your own site. You can get widgets for so many different business related sites, Facebook and LinkedIin included. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts to find out how to do just that. For today though, we are looking at Twitter. And, bonus, you don’t really need to know too much about web design or coding to do this (although a little does help!). Log into your account, then look at the very bottom of the page, and click on the link for Goodies:

From here you can select to create a Widget for your account. Buttons can be used if you just want someone to know you are on Twitter but not pull in all of the content from your Twitter page.

Next you will be taken to a page that allows you to put in your own settings to get the look and feel you want for your site. Keep your web page in mind while you are doing this and picking the colors and size. You want something that fits and makes sense. First, pick your Preferences. Those in the screenshot below are what I prefer, but by all means, go with something different! Polling for new results each time someone visits your site is a good idea. You don’t want it to be a stagnant old list. Including a scroll bar really depends on if you pull in a lot of tweets or only decide to show a few. I like the look of tweets that come through in a timed interval. So, every few seconds a new tweet shows up. If you don’t like that approach, simply choose load all tweets and everything will come in at once. For this you would definitely need to include a scroll bar. If you are doing the timed interval, select how often you want a new tweet to load, how many tweets and if you want the results to be looped. Depending on how frequently you are tweeting, you might want to put 20 or 30 as the number of tweets, or less or more as you see fit.

Next, look at the Appearance of the widget. This allows you to set the colors of the text, links and background. If you click on each section, a little color chart will appear. You can either use that to make your selection, or type in the HEX color if you are familiar with this method. It’s pretty easy as the colors will change in the widget example displayed as you select new colors. Play around until you get something that works and you like the look of.

Finally, set your Dimensions. You won’t be able to see the new size from here, you just need to trust that it will be sized once you put the code onto your website. You can now see what you final widget will look like.

The last step is to get the code for your widget. At the very bottom you will see a button for getting the code. Simply select all of the text and copy it to your clip board (simple right click with the mouse to select copy, or Ctrl+C).

Next you have a few choices, and it really depends on your comfort level and the way your website is set up:

• Send the code to your web designer and tell them where you would like it on your website.
• If you have access to your own pages and are comfortable modifying the code, paste it in directly where you would like to see the Twitter widget
• If you have WordPress, simply log in, go to Appearance on the left navigation, click on Widgets, and use a Text Widget and simply paste the code in there.

You will notice at the top of the code it details the width and the height of the widget so if it needs changing slightly you can easily do it yourself. The interval can be modified too if you find it to be too fast or too slow as the new tweets show up. Just change the first digit. Need help? Either e-mail info@purplestarconsulting.com or just post your questions below. Happy Tweeting!

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