Make it easy for your readers to retweet your content

The Topsy plugin for WordPress lets you integrate Topsy search features with your blog.

This plugin places a button on your blog posts showing how many times each has been retweeted, and allowing readers to retweet by clicking. It can also turn tweets into comments for your WordPress blog. This plugin queries Topsy’s real-time index of tweets to automatically generate retweet buttons and trackback comments on your posts.

Installation Instructions

As of October 26, 2009, the Topsy Widgets plugin is available from the WordPress Plugin Directory. If you have previously installed the plugin from here, your WordPress administrative dashboard should already be notifying you that a new version is available. If not, simply go to:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/topsy/

Once you have the installation package:

1. Download and extract the plugin.
2. Copy the topsy folder to the “/wp-content/plugins/” directory on your blog host
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Look at the plugin’s Settings page. Activate Trackback Comments, if desired; adjust Retweet Button settings as desired, etc.

The Topsy plugin will create Retweet buttons on your blog posts, which: a) Show how many times the post has been tweeted; and b) Allow your readers to easily retweet about your posts. If you turn on the Trackback Comments feature, the plugin will also check for tweets that link to your blog posts, and generate a new comment on the target post for each tweet.

The plugin requires PHP5, and will not work with PHP4. It has been tested and verified with PHP 5.1.6 and 5.2.8, and should perform properly with any PHP in the 5.1-5.3 series.

Screenshots

The Topsy plugin creates Retweet Buttons, showing how many times your articles have been retweeted. The button also allows your blog’s readers to easily retweet about your content.

The button can be displayed in large or small sizes (as shown above). You can also move the button to the left side, or after your article’s content. Plus, you can apply your own CSS rules to it.

Here are some images that show how the Topsy plugin adds trackback comments.

Step 1:

Someone writes a tweet that includes a link to your blog post.

Step 2:

The plugin automatically creates a trackback comment — no muss, no fuss!

Feedback

We’re always interested in making our creations better, and the best way we can do that is by listening to you, our users. If you’ve got something you want to tell us about the Topsy WordPress plugin — or any other Topsy product — email us at feedback@topsy.com. If you let us know that you’ve installed our button we’ll be better able to support you if you run into any issues (and we will never spam you), so don’t be shy.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I deactivate or remove the plugin, what happens to my trackback comments?

Trackback comments are real comments, inserted into the WP comments database. The plugin creates the comments, but after that, they exist on their own. Deactivating or removing the plugin will have no effect on them.

If you want to remove the plugin and all the trackback comments, you should start by using the “Delete Trackback Comments” button. This will delete all the trackback comments that were created by the plugin (and leave other comments and trackbacks untouched). In the yellow message box at the top of the next page, click the “deactivate this plugin” link, and then you can delete the plugin.

When someone links to a post of mine, how quickly will the trackback comment appear?

It will appear the next time someone tries to load the post page. As the page loads, the Topsy plugin checks to see if there are any new links to the page, and adds comments if there are.

However, if you’re allowing search engines to index your blog, then the search engine’s hits will also trigger the plugin, so it’s entirely possible that search engines will keep your trackback comments up-to-date without any human intervention.

I deleted one of the trackback comments, but it keeps coming back. Help!

If the plugin is still activated, it will re-generate trackback comments every time a blog post page is loaded.

If you want to keep the plugin activated, and block one or two comments from reappearing, you can use the “Unapprove” feature in the WordPress dashboard. An Unapproved comment will not be visible on your blog’s pages.

I used one of the 0.9.x releases, and have trackback comments in old styles (with “Original tweet” and “Topsy page” links). How can I make my old comments like the new ones?

Just use the new “Delete Trackback Comments” button. Since the plugin will automatically regenerate comments if it’s still active, the delete button will clean up the old comments and let new ones be created in the new style.

How can I get rid of the duplicate trackback comments littering my blog?

Again, just use the “Delete Trackback Comments” button. All the duplicate comments will go away, and then the correct ones will be regenerated over the next day or so. Alternatively, if you delete duplicate comments manually, the incorrect ones will not reappear — that bug has been resolved, and will not reoccur.